


Calcium and Fire

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Hawaii, M/M, Vacation, shark cages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Marquis decides to listen to his lieutenants and takes a vacation. The problem is that Lung does... at the same time, to the same place, on the same deluxe resort option.
Relationships: Kenta | Lung/Marquis
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

“I believe you are slipping.”  
  
Marquis paused at the words, then went back to straightening his suit. Spruce did not make unqualified statements, and after making an assertion of any sort would follow it up with a short, concise, and frequently-reasonable explanation. Furthermore, the man spoke truth to power, and that (along with a perfectionism which kept his hair and clothes clean enough to use as surgical bandages) put him in Marquis’s perpetual good books. When Spruce spoke Marquis listened, a decision which he rarely regretted.  
  
Rarely was not never, however.  
  
“An interesting proposition. What about you, Cinderhands?” Marquis asked, unrolling his sleeves, digging a pair of ivory cufflinks out of his pocket, and securing his shirt cuffs. “Am I slipping?”  
  
The teen froze where he was, the fires on his charcoal-textured hands dying out. “Uhh...”  
  
Marquis smiled. Mysterious, unthreatening, and neutral. “I prefer painful honesty to gentle lies every time. Please, speak your mind.”  
  
Cinderhands’s eyes flicked from Marquis to Spruce, then back again. The piercing in his upper lip wiggled and his Adam’s apple bobbed once. “I don’t think you’re not the most dangerous motherfucker in the city, but like...”  
  
He trailed off and started fiddling with the blocky rings in his ears. “Yeah. I think you’re slipping.”  
  
Marquis picked up his jacket, shrugged it on, and considered the implications of the words.  
  
Then he turned to Spruce. “Is this because of my daughter?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Good. He hadn’t wanted to kill the man. “The debacle with Iron Rain?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Marquis frowned. “Then what, precisely, is worrying you?”  
  
Spruce turned to stare at Cinderhands silently, and when Marquis mirrored the action the red-headed teen shook his head and shrugged. “Don’t take this the wrong way boss, but things are going good right now. Empire’s staying whipped, good guys are toeing the line, and everyone else is asking how high when we tell ‘em to jump.”  
  
He reached up to rub his neck, brushing up against a collar marked with black scorch mark. “Thing is, you’re still acting like it’s the bad old days. Long shifts, hard work, and dangerous jobs. We ain’t fighting a war, but you’re treating the next one like it’s right around the corner.”  
  
“Resting on your laurels is an excellent way to have them stolen away from you,” Marquis replied automatically.  
  
Cinderhands cowered a little under the comment, but Spruce coughed lightly before Marquis could talk further. “An excess of vigilance also tends to be self defeating. What my less-erudite colleague means is that the benefits of our current paradigm do not seem to be worth their costs.”  
  
Marquis narrowed his eyes at Spruce.  
  
Then he closed them, stepped back into the discipline which let him shatter his entire skeleton without flinching, and went over the criticism.  
  
Calmly.  
  
He opened his eyes. “I believe this is neither the time nor the place for such discussion. I do not believe either of your opinions to be without merit, however. Finish your work here, then consider yourselves off for the night. We will discuss things further over dinner at _la Cime_ later this week.”  
  
Marquis turned around and left the storage unit behind. Spruce would disassemble the hero's corpse into its component particles, and then Cinderhands would sterilize what was left. A final pass from Spruce would collect the ash into a glaze bone urn, which in turn would be delivered to the PRT headquarters with a hand-written apology on expensive paper. Not enough to compensate for the loss of a son, a brother, a father, but it was enough to let Leon sleep at night.  
  
Pulling the bone mask back under his skin, Leon unlocked his Lincoln, slid into the driver’s seat, and brought the vehicle to life in a rumble of state-of-the-art engineering and classical music. After taking a moment to adjust his mirrors, he pulled out into the street, mentally review the route home, and settled in for a long, relaxing drive.  
  


* * *

  
  
 _“You seem unwell.”_  
  
Lung examined the cigarette between his fingers, buying himself the few seconds he needed to dredge up the meanings attached to the foreign words.  
  
When the purpose the sentence became apparent, he incinerated it with a thought.  
  
 _“Explain.”_  
  
 _“I mean what I say. You seem unwell.”_ Oni Lee was loyal. He was many other things, but for the purpose of judging whether criticism was warranted that single feature of his character so completely overwhelmed the others that they may as well have not existed. When Lung told him to attack Oni Lee did so. When Lung told him to retreat, Oni Lee did so. At times this made him seem more tool than man, and for the purpose of serving Lung that was frequently enough.  
  
For the purposes of addressing Kenta, however, a more complex conversation partner than Lee would’ve made the exercise less exhausting.  
  
 _“Why do I seem unwell?”_ Kenta asked, grabbing a pair of jeans.  
  
 _“You sleep little, engage in less fucking, and respond aggressively to almost every individual who talks to you.”_ Lee had a more difficult costume to take off, but he also seemed to waste less time removing it. _“I assume you are unhappy or in some way ill.”_  
  
 _“I am not.”_ Kenta pulled on a tank top, then walked around the van to get to the passenger seat. After a moment he heard the metallic thunk of the back doors closing, followed shortly by Lee getting into the driver’s seat.  
  
He didn’t start the vehicle, and Kenta took some time to gather his thoughts.  
  
 _“Is the gang upset?”_ he tried.  
  
Lee shrugged. _“The gang has not complained to me, but they discuss the extended shifts extensively when they believe I am not present.”_  
  
Kenta rubbed his jaw, mulling over the information. _“Do they complain about waiting?”_  
  
 _“They complain about working.”_  
  
He snorted. Of course the gangsters were complaining about having to be gangsters. In other news, water fell from the sky and the world was round. _“Tell them that weakness does not receive rewards.”_  
  
Lee nodded. _“How should I inform Liao?”_  
  
Kenta let the name hang in the air for a moment.  
  
 _“Liao is the one in charge of the foot soldiers.”_ Not a question. Dragons did not display a lack in any capacity.  
  
They could, however, posit a statement in such a way that it could be refuted.  
  
 _“He questioned the wisdom of your frequent raids. We stand to gain little and the consequences of increased aggression would be dramatic.”_ Lee never added stressors to words in his sentences. The world came to him as it was, and any additional judgement upon it stood outside his purview. It never failed to leave those who met his civilian guise disappointed and lightly unsettled, even if the irony of describing a serial killer as ‘boring’ never failed to bring an amused grin to Kenta’s face.  
  
All that said, such banal objectivity was sometimes more persuasive than an impassioned argument.  
  
A siren split the air, and Lee finally turned on the van. He drove away from the still-burning warehouse at a calm, measured pace, a mile per hour under the speed limit, coming to complete stops, waiting at yellows. Kenta let the drive pass in silence, tallying the actions he’d taken recently.  
  
Attack the Empire. Defend against the Protectorate. Attack the Scallywags. Defend against the Empire. Attack the Noblesse and a bank at the same time. Start a new racket. Look for foreigners who wanted a foothold in America. Initiations.  
  
Kenta considered the raw volume, and taken together it did feel like a substantial number of events for just two months.  
  
Lee dropped him off at an apartment complex in the nicer side of town, nodding once before driving off to find a different safehouse in which to spend the night. Kenta watched the van go, then turned to head into the building.  
  
The apartment he unlocked appeared empty. After taking a sniff to confirm that the abode was uncompromised, Kenta shucked off his clothes and started for the shower.  
  
He had some thinking to do.


	2. Chapter 2

It was with great reluctance that Leon decided to take a vacation.  
  
The news went over well for everyone else. Spruce showed a single iota of emotion, the man in charge of taking the minutes smiled openly, and Cinderhands scorched the table with his enthusiasm. Leon took the responses with good cheer, then politely informed the men standing guard that if they imitated such actions he would quietly hide their bodies at the bottom of the bay.  
  
That sobered the atmosphere, though not as much as he’d hoped it would.  
  
Plans had come together depressingly quickly. Amy would bounce between families, cared for by the wives of gang members. Plane tickets were billed to a general expense account for a ‘leadership seminar’ in Honolulu. A summer wardrobe was prepared, a request eagerly fulfilled by the elderly woman who cackled when Leon went in to make the request.  
  
“It’ll be nice to see some color on you!” she near-shouter, baring nicotine-yellow teeth while one gnarled hand danced over the keys of her register.  
  
The days leading up to his departure faded away far faster than he’d have liked, and soon Leon was glaring out the window of a first class seat in a light blue suit, drumming his fingers against his arm rest. His copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ lay unopened on his lap, begging to be read, but Leon’s thoughts remained on Brockton Bay, just a last-minute cancelation and a thirty minute car ride away.  
  
He sighed and pushed away the idle thought. A promise was a promise, and after Spruce showed him the steadily-increasing cases of permanent mutilation in the field since Amy had come into his life Leon had conceded the need for a break. Simply put, raising a child while managing one of the larger parahuman gangs in one of the more contentious cities in North America did not a quiet life make. Though many pretend otherwise, parahumans were people too, and as such needed things like food, sleep, and genuine downtime.  
  
Leon sighed again.  
  
As much as he loved her, caring for Amy could not be called downtime. Thus the vacation. Thus the horrendous blue suits. Thus the five days, four nights, away from his city, in a tropical, sunny paradise.  
  
**“We are waiting on just one more passenger, folks, and only one! The rest of this flight is packed to the bursting, and once we’re all the way full we’ll begin our eleven hour flight to Honolulu, Hawaii! The name’s the same word for ‘Big Island’ in the state’s native tongue, by the way!”**  
  
Leon rolled his eyes and picked up Austin’s best-known novel. The in-flight radio wouldn’t be available until the plane reached some arbitrary altitude, and until then he’d have to try and live through the inane chatter simple people spewed in an attempt to seem interesting.  
  
A task made easier by the company of some of the better words written in the past few hundred years.  
  
Around the same time Darcy refused to dance, Leon became aware of a presence in the aisle beside him.  
  
When he looked up, Lung was staring back.  
  
It was not a conclusion he reached lightly. On the other hand, there were only so many six-foot Asian men in Brockton Bay, fewer with muscles that could draw a tailored shirt tight, and fewer still with tattoos just barely discernible beneath it. Leon had not gone out of his way to acquire information about Lung’s identity, but he’d personally seen the man enough to know roughly what he looked like,  
  
And while the individual standing in the aisle with a look black enough to cast a shadow on the sun _could_ simply be an exceptionally tall, fit ABB gangbanger deciding to take a vacation, Leon doubted it.  
  
Years of hard-earned reflexes urged him to lash out. Self-control forged out of the same years plus a few extra kept Leon from blowing his cover then and there. Instead he quietly slipped a bookmark into place, set the novel fully on his lap, and nodded once. “I don’t believe I know your name.”  
  
The corner of Lung’s lip twitched, but he didn’t give up the game. A shame. Negotiation when one side had the clear upper hand tended to go much more smoothly than when there was reasonable room for doubt.  
  
Well, reasonable in the eyes of an upstart thug.  
  
Instead, the gangster turned to face the stewardess behind him. “I require a different seat.”  
  
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Sir, you arrived on this plane just before the doors closed. While you may choose to get off the plane at this moment, I’m afraid that rearranging seats at this juncture is quite impossible.”  
  
She leaned forward. “In the future, a more punctual arrival might help you more than us.”  
  
With that the stewardess walked away, leaving Lung standing impotently in the aisle, backpack dwarfed by the useless muscle it rested on.  
  
Once near the end of the aisle, she glanced over her shoulder. “Sir, please sit down before we have your forcibly removed from the plane.”  
  
Lung sat down.  
  
Once Leon felt the plane in motion, he reopened his book, pointedly looked away from the tattooed man next to him, and began talking as quietly as he could.  
  
“Having fully considered your suite of abilities, I do believe I could kill you faster than you could hope to kill me.”  
  
The armrest that Leon had vacated creaked under new pressure. “Try me.”  
  
Leon turned a page, shoving down the urge to snort in disdain. “I’d rather not. This is my vacation, and the sudden death of my seatmate would place substantial suspicion on my shoulders. Instead I would simply slip away from you, murder the pilots, and fly back to earth while you plummeted to your death thirty thousand feet below.”  
  
Lung actually did snort with disdain. “I would grow wings.”  
  
“In the space of just under three minutes? I would be impressed.” Leon closed his book for the second time in five minutes and mourned the lost reading time. It was so hard to stay cultured. “Even if you survived, a fight in an enclosed environment between a pair such as ourselves would get... messy.”  
  
A silence stretched out. The plane moved, a little, then stopped.  
  
“Your code.” The words were uncharged. Neutral.  
  
Leon nodded. “All things considered, I would prefer not to slaughter several dozen women and children to save my own skin. Neither of us care for the attention such an act would bring, and the chances either of us could escape such a battle without having the event tied to our names is slim.”  
  
Leon lifted his right hand and left it palm-up, staring resolutely at the back of the seat in front of him. “I propose a truce for the duration of this flight plus twenty four hours. Do you agree?”  
  
For a long second Leon was afraid Lung would say no and he’d have to lobotomize the man and hope for the best.  
  
Then the jet engines started up and Lung took his hand. “Agreed.”  
  
The dragon man’s grip was painfully firm, and neither of them slept a wink.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Kenta saw Lee, he was going to burn him. Not seriously, but enough to hurt.  
  
When Kenta first arrived, fresh from the sinking of Kyushu, the local Yakuza had explained to him that there were three parahumans who were clearly heads and shoulders above the rest: Challenger, Allfather, and Marquis. Challenger was a military vet from back when the Protectorate was a glimmer in the top-four’s eyes, Allfather was vicious as he was racist, and Marquis had displayed the ability to beat the odds so consistently that it’d ceased to be a surprise. Those three parahumans had decent odds in a straight fight versus any other two capes in the city, and if you valued your own skin you stayed well enough away from all of them.  
  
There’d been a fourth, Flock, who’d commanded the local branch of the Chinese Triads, but Kenta had ripped her head off.  
  
That murder had been the result of weeks of preparation, of patience, of ass-kissing. He’d bent the knee to people who’d have sold him back to the Yangban in a heartbeat if they’d known what he’d done, if they’d known his father was Japanese, if he’d spoken anything other than perfect Mandarin. He’d had to keep a straight face when quiet, unconscious bodies were carted into shipping containers while he stood guard. He kept his composure when one of the other parahumans, a younger girl, had started feeling him up, her broken teeth bared in the parody of a smile. He’d sworn a solemn oath on an ancient sword, looking the Grandmaster of the local branch dead in the eye, and pledged his undying loyalty to the Imperial line.  
  
Only once he’d well and truly secured their trust did Lung unleash his fire upon them.  
  
The rest of the gangs fell in line quickly. Their parahumans would fight him, die, and then their unpowered members would cede control of their operations to him. The Filipinos didn't like working with the Japanese, the Japanese didn’t like working with the Chinese, and Chinese didn’t like working with anyone, _including_ the Chinese, but at the end of the day they all paid dues to the same person.  
  
Him.  
  
It took work for one parahuman to stand against many. Preparation. With a few minutes to ramp up, Lung felt comfortable against any two parahumans in the bay, including Challenger, Allfather, and the Marquis. Add in a few more minutes and comfortable shifted to confident. No one in the city could match him after a certain point, and eventually no combination of people would be able to match him.  
  
That all supposed Kenta would have the time to pick his battles, to pick the environment. Even in a reactionary stance though, responding to an invasion of his territory, he’d at least have time to gather his strength. A handful of seconds could make the difference between a holding action and full-blown victory, and he’d become excellent at seizing those seconds.  
  
His seat on the plane gave him nothing.  
  
“Two whiskeys,” he told the stewardess, holding up a pair of snack-sized empty Jack bottles and pointedly refusing to look at anything. The near-instantly lethal man next to him had plugged in his headphones and gone back to his book, humming tunelessly to the indistinct classical music. Kenta could feel the scales rippling under his skin, begging to be let out, and only a discipline honed by years in a CUI pit kept him from taking his chances.  
  
The flight had been perhaps the most testing experience he’d had since then. Eleven hours, one meal, and two bathroom trips of pure tension. Where Challenger had made her name in the throes of war and Allfather by blatantly ignoring any semblance of common decency towards those he considered lesser, Marquis had built his reputation by being very, very good and making the people he disliked disappear. One day a cape would be an up-and-coming star, with power in spades and charisma to match, and the day after they crossed the Noblesse they’d be gone. No warning, no mercy, just murder in such a uniformly untraceable way that all of them had to be the actions of the same neurotically perfect individual.  
  
The empty plastic containers were taken away and replaced with two fresh ones, which Kenta promptly opened and began tasting. His healing factor made inebriation nothing more than a fond memory, but over time he’d learned to savor the burn of alcohol. The subtleties of good versus poor liquor was a luxury he left to people who didn’t have foot soldiers to drink with, but the mere act of consuming alcohol soothed his nerves.  
  
That, and every expense he incurred on this flight was another piece of his revenge against the airline which dared seat him next to Marquis.  
  
A tone chimed through the plane. **“We’re beginning our descent and’ll be wheels-down in just fifteen minutes, folks! Please put up your tray tables and seat backs, and if you’ve got little ones it might be worth wrangling them back into their seats! Local time will be eleven thirty seven AM, local temperature will be a balmy eight two, and the weather is absolutely gorgeous! Thank you for flying Delta, I’ve been your pilot Jennard Alexi, assisted by Bryce Fairweather and Maynard Ellens, and we hope to see you again!”**  
  
Kenta narrowed his eyes. “You will, Mr. Alexi. You will.”  
  
“If you could restrain your rampage until after I return home, I would be willing to reign in my own desire to remove your brain from your body.” Marquis closed his book, pulled his backpack out from under his seat, and after stowing it away on top of a painfully-organized pile of tupperware containers put it back and folded his hands in a posture of pure serenity. “All things considered, I would prefer not to wait several extra days to return home after the untimely death of a foolish parahuman who attempted to wreak vengeance upon an ultimately benign company for his own mistakes.”  
  
Kenta swallowed the entire bottle of Jack in one go, savoring the temporary feeling of lightheadedness before his healing factor kicked in. “Perhaps you could never return home. That would absolve you of your travel plans.”  
  
Marquis sighed, a noise which nearly cost the plane an armrest. “‘A’ for effort but ‘C’ for execution, I’m afraid. In order to deliver a proper death threat, one must be completely confident in his ability to carry it out. Now then, why don’t we go back to staring silently at the seats in front of us for the remainder of this flight, then be on our merry way.”  
  
After finishing the second bottle, Kenta crushed both in his hand, melting the plastic together with a thought and a whiff of burning chemicals. Enough of an answer for Marquis, and soon enough they were enduring the shakey landing, near-endless waiting for the incompetent fools in front of them trying to pull bags out from the overhead compartments. Once out of the plane and in the airport proper, the two men began walking towards the baggage claim, uncomfortably in-step with one another.  
  
“Do remember, our truce extends for a full twenty-four hours after we leave this airport,” Marquis commented, adjusting his path just enough to brush past the odd person arguing on their Blackberry without colliding directly with them.  
  
Kenta growled, walking against the flow of people and glaring at anyone who didn’t get out of his way fast enough. “I can count, and I keep my word.”  
  
Marquis clicked his tongue as they stepped through the point of no return and descended the stairs towards the baggage claims. “Yue Fei would beg to differ, but we can agree to disagree on the general strength of your promises so long as you stay honest this time.”  
  
Kenta had no answer for that and kept silent while they waited for their luggage to come around. His duffel bag came around and Kenta snagged it with a single motion. He thought about saying goodbye, then dismissed the thought and turned away:  
  
The meeting had been a coincidence. Nothing more.  
  
A man was holding a sign up high at the curb, one that bore the name KENTA TAKAHASHI. After defusing the threat of a Lei via murderous glare, he was guided onto a tour bus, where several old couples and a single, squalling family had already found their seats.  
  
All in the back.  
  
Kenta flared his nostrils and took the widow-side frontmost seat. A well-cultivated aura of ‘don’t fuck with me’ warded off passenger after passenger, until all the seats save for the one to his immediate right were filled. Alone, as always, and satisfied with the fact.  
  
“And here’s our final passenger!”  
  
When Kenta looked up he saw Marquis staring back at him.”  
  
“You’ll have to sit next to Mr. Takahashi, Mr. Lavere,” the guide said, smiling obliviously as he shattered what little plausible deniability remained between the two parahumans. “I’m afraid the rest of the seats are taken, and we do have a schedule to keep.”  
  
Mar- Mr. Lavere smiled with dry, dead eyes at the guide, then stiffly took the seat. Moments later the bus was underway, ferrying thirty eight upper-class white people and two super villains to their final destination.  
  
The Green Pond hotel had twenty five floors, a chlorinated Olympic-sized swimming pool, two water slides, an eight hole golf course, and a private beach larger than Brockton Bay’s wharves. It boasted a staff larger than some villages, a collection of native artifacts that aroused the ire of private collectors, museums, and local tribes many times over, and several weeks worth of pre-planned activities that never feared cancelation thanks to an exceptionally powerful shaker ensuring a balanced, beautiful schedule of sun, sprinkles, and exciting storms.  
  
There was more to the guide’s speech, but Kenta kept most of his focus on the seething mass of needles currently in human form beside him.  
  
Neither man talked. Instead, a tense, mutually-preferable silence settled between them, the least of the possible evils they could’ve endured. When they got off on the same floor and took rooms directly across from one another, it almost seemed funny.  
  
Mr. Lavere’s smile has all the humor of a tombstone, and no busboy was brave enough to offer Kenta help with his bag.  
  
Once the unsettled staff had left, Mr. Lavere turned to face Kenta in the hall. “Mr. Takahashi, I believe we have matters to discuss.”  
  
“I will see you at the bar.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“A bottle of a pinot noir, at least twenty years old.”  
  
Wine. Of course. Kenta pointed at the only non-European, non-Pacific Islander drink on the shelf. “Sake. Leave the bottle.”  
  
After getting the respective drinks and scaring away the bartender, Mr. Lavere placed his hand over the bottle and pulled the cork out. Kenta caught a flash of bone before the cork dropped to the counter top, and soon two glasses were filled with the ruby-red liquid.  
  
“I believe neither of us care for pleasantries when civilian identities are at stake, so let’s be frank: my name is Leon Lavere, and if you attempt to use my name against me I will find you and murder everyone you love or care about, then rip your skeleton from your still-living body and run what’s left through a woodchipper.”  
  
Kenta ripped open the seal on the sake, then softened the brass cap until he could pull it off without twisting. “Kenta. Attack me and I’ll eat your liver.”  
  
Leon sipped from his glass, shrugged, and took a second, longer draft. When that was done, he rolled his head to the side. “You intend to stay five days and four nights?”  
  
“The deluxe work week tour,” Kenta confirmed, sniffing the sake, then going bottoms up. Liquid hissed where it met hot glass, and Kenta savored the mixture of literal and metaphorical heat the substance gave him. “Our truce will need extending.”  
  
“Indefinitely. A complete and total ceasefire between our people.” Leon pursed his lips. “That is, unless—“  
  
Kenta brought the bottle down, hard enough to send tremors through Leon's wine. “I work for no man.”  
  
Once the stares from other patrons stopped, Leon leaned in close. “I was instructed to relax while outside of the Bay. We can leave the question of how our mutual concerns interact for then, but for now I need to know that sticking a needle of bone through your orbital socket and feeding your corpse to the sharks is not my safest option.”  
  
He leaned back. “Convince me.”  
  
Kenta looked at the bottle in his hand.  
  
Then he bit the top.  
  
It hurt. The glass was hot enough to deform before it snapped, and more than hot enough to burn. Kenta could feel his teeth melt, feel them burst, feel the nerves catch fire, then go dead when he ramped up the heat in his mouth.  
  
It hurt, filling his mouth with flame. It hurt more, holding back his transformation, resisting the urge to explode into violence, to lash out against the effeminate, wafish man next to him. Kenta’s skin was an egg shell, and the scales beneath it was a hurricane.  
  
Life hurt though, so Kenta endured while the glass in his mouth slowly turned from solid to liquid.  
  
When the consistency felt right and not a second before, Kenta drew his head back and spat into a nearby ashtray. Cigarette butts ignited, glass cracked from heat, and a bartender shouted some foreign curse. Kenta watched impassively as the man cleared away the mess, apologizing profusely, letting his mouth regenerate. When bartender disappeared to get a replacement, he turned to Leon and bared his teeth.  
  
“The safest option is the one which does not involve angering a dragon,” he growled, leaning into the man’s personal space.  
  
Leon met his gaze.  
  
Imperceptible, he nodded.  
  
“I will see you tomorrow, then.”


	4. Chapter 4

“—and that’s why Danny’s _fourth_ favorite sport is lacrosse!”  
  
Kenta reflected on how much easier his life would be if he’d simply decided to spend a week in a whorehouse instead of Hawaii.  
  
The morning had gone well enough. Kenta had woken up, listened through the walls, and when Leon’s heartbeat was noticeably missing from his room showered in relative peace. At breakfast he’d been able to secure a table close to the doors of the dining room, as far away from Leon’s position on the balcony as physically possible given the dimensions of the room, and had been sure to arrive early enough on the bus to secure a seat at the back.  
  
That final decision had been a mistake.  
  
“Now you see Sarah’s not like the boys. Oooooooh no, Mama Lewinski wasn’t about to let Papa Lewinski monopolize all the children. See, she needed a feminine touch, and while it might be hard to believe I could certainly provide that!”  
  
Enhanced sense were a subtle power. They made it far more difficult to ambush Kenta, gave him an edge in negotiations with those who hadn’t learned to control physiological reactions, and with training let him learn when suppliers were trying to rip him off. Not as flashy as the macro-scale and precise pyrokinesis that came with his later-stage transformations, but certainly more useful on a day to day basis.  
  
“—And I swear, if my portfolio drops another half a percent like that over the course of a day I’m going to need a fucking pacemaker installed—”  
  
“—If the homeless would stop complaining and take an ounce of responsibility for their own misfortune, I’d feel far more compelled to drop some money in their cups—”  
  
“—Have you heard of this fresh new things called ‘hip-hop?’ I hear the kids are all over it these days but I just can’t understand the words—”  
  
Hell. Kenta was in hell. Beside him was a jabbering harpy who wouldn’t know interesting if it grew teeth and ripped off her face, and his only other options for stimulus was the blather of the other eight equally milquetoast bougie suburbanites. His choices were bad, more bad, and bad of the same. There wasn’t even a worse option, a way to escalate, because all of these people _were exactly the fucking same_.  
  
What made the whole experience worse was that Leon had escaped it. Through charisma, exceptional lying, or black magic, he’d somehow isolated himself from the raving pack of utterly unamusing individuals, and was taking in the surrounding countryside side without a care in the world. The man practically radiated contented bliss, a picture-perfect golfer in a white dress t-shirt, khaki shorts, and birkenstocks, showing off lightly-haired legs and a slim build that had some of the marginally less-boring women (and one man) eyeing him up.  
  
Kenta could count the number of humans he hated more than Leon at that moment on one hand, and none of them were so temptingly inside firing range.  
  
The bus rattled to a halt, and their painfully-cheerful and painfully-tanned guide slid out of his seat to address the cabin. “And here we are, folks! The Hitchknife trail is just under three miles long, with breaks in the tropical tree line for six stunning vistas! You can expect to be walking for around forty five minutes, less if we move quickly and more if the views are particularly engaging.”  
  
The guide clapped his hands, smiling wide to reveal teeth imperfect enough to set Kenta a little more at ease. Not completely cookie-cutter, then. “Now, let’s get this show on the road!”  
  
As they filed off the bus and onto the mountain path, well-beaten with an exceptionally thick canopy, Kenta noticed two things.  
  
First, that the smell of sweat laced with chemicals didn’t dissipate nearly as much as he’d hoped it would when the party began moving through the jungle.  
  
Second, Leon was sweatier than almost everyone other traveler in the pack.  
  
He hid it well. Slight protrusions where humans shouldn’t have protrusions kept his shirt from sticking to him, and a gentle smile disarmed most of the people looking at him. Kenta’s nose didn’t lie though, and the unflappable lord of bone was beginning to smell like a locker room.  
  
An idea struck Kenta. It was petty, conniving, and a level of harassment so low that if he caught anyone under his banner engaging in it he’d have them beaten for a lack of spine.  
  
On the other hand, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do on the hike.  
  
A few minutes into the hike, Kenta started a fire.  
  
It was a small one, barely larger than a camping stove, hidden by a tree trunk and several layers of foliage. Out of sight, out of mind, and without Kenta’s pyrokinesis and senses nigh-on undetectable.  
  
Kenta sustained it as the group moved past it, then snuffed it out once the final member drew away.  
  
He kept making the fires. The ranges varied, as did the intensities. Without ramping up, there were hard, specific limits to what he could do. On the other hand, Kenta had not stayed alive for as long as he had by not exploring his powers thoroughly. Soon he found a rhythm of creation and negation, filling empty spaces with heat and flame while the guide continued to prattle on.  
  
Slowly, the temperature began to rise.  
  
As Kenta walked around in his parade of unseen ignition, he found himself seizing on the details around him. Here was a flower he’d never seen before, drooping down and heavy with water inside its cupped petals. There was a lizard, scuttling towards the tongues of fire hidden by a fern. A bird sang somewhere, deep and loud and completely unlike the meager sparrows or crass seagulls in Brockton Bay, and Kenta found himself dissecting the guide’s speech, trying to figure out what species was making the noise.  
  
He took another step and suddenly he was back in China.  
  
Not in the hole. Not in the prison. Instead, it felt like those precious weeks he’d had running away, foraging through thick foliage, catching what he could, and flash-roasting it to eat while sprinting away from the crack squad of numbered parahumans trying to catch him. There his ability to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding life had been limited by the threat of enslavement only ever a day or two behind, but now...  
  
He could take some time to stop and feel the texture of an alien tree.  
  
Eventually, someone noticed Kenta’s game.  
  
The first were the elderly couple. They slowed down and shucked off what light coats they had, baring withered, wrinkled arms in an attempt to alleviate the worst of the heat. Next came the parents on vacation, who whipped out water bottles and suntan lotion, oiling themselves up without pausing their jaws. Eyes flicked to one another, passing along a sentiment of discomfort, not quite enough to voice for individuals with a shred of pride and self-respect.  
  
There were those, however, who lacked the latter.  
  
“It’s fucking hot,” one of the men groused. He was a corpulent being, the orange and purple of his polo clashing violently with his green and brown checker shorts.  
  
The guide stopped mid-step, his monologue about a specific species of bird momentarily paused. “Well, yes, we are in the tropics.”  
  
The fat man narrowed his eyes. “Boy, I’ve trucked through the Filipino rainforest every year for two weeks for more years than you’ve been alive. There’s hot, then there’s tropic hot, then there’s someone fucking with you by putting a heat lamp above your bunk hot. This one’s the last variety, in case you were wondering.”  
  
“Clearsky is under a very tight contract—” the guide began.  
  
“When are we getting to the first scenic spot?” Karrin took a long chug from her water bottle before tossing it off into a pack of ferns. “These Kodiaks aren’t going to use themselves.”  
  
Kenta saw the guide’s grin twitch. Just a bit, but it was there, and the sight sent a tiny shiver of satisfaction through him. “Please do not litter ma’am, it’s against state regulations. The first cliffside is just—”  
  
“I need to go to the bathroom.” This time it was an older lady, hobbling off the path and into the surrounding greenery.  
  
Another man, bean-pole thin with a haircut this side of military, cleared his throat and tapped his watch twice. “When are we going to be done? I have a very important call in thirty minutes.”  
  
“Where are the tooooooooucaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnssssss?” a little boy groaned, falling to the ground while his mother and father tried to assure him that yes, toucans were native to Hawaii, the guide was just in the process of calling them up, and if he was able to make it through the hike he’d see the biggest bird in the world.  
  
Kenta watched the group fall apart, petty squabbles turning into full-blown arguments, ires tempered by the heat finally put to use. As the chaos unfolded he let himself smile, content with a job well-done.  
  
What made him laugh, however, was a flushed, sweat-stained Leon, caught in the middle of four separate fights, finally frowning.  
  


* * *

  
  
“—therefore you should never, _ever_ trust a young person with your brand-new BMW!”  
  
When Leon got back to Brockton Bay, he was going to maim Spruce.  
  
He wasn’t going to kill the man. Heri had rendered him too much valuable service to be slaughtered like a generic foot soldier, and was worth more alive than the small dip he’d see in general discipline if word got around that not every failure was a death sentence.  
  
With that said, someone had to pay for this travesty, and since he was already footing the financial bill he’d just have to take the rest of the cost out of someone’s hide.  
  
The elevator _dinged_ and Keith started at the noise. “Welp, looks like this is my stop Leo! See you at the wine tasting!”  
  
The wizened man slowly struggled out of the elevator, blissfully ignorant of how close he’d come to death. Leon maintained his smile until the doors closed, then dropped the expression when he saw his reflection in the brushed metal.  
  
A mess. Strands of hair were sticking out erratically, his shirt was discolored at the pits and collar, and somehow his legs legs had become peppered in bug bites without him noticing. The last item would be fixed by a total-body bone protrusion (minor healing factors had a way of becoming major when considered carefully), but he’d hardly been able to perform such a maneuver while surrounded by witnesses. Instead, he’d had to endure the mild, perpetually perceptible itching for the rest of the miserable hike, the bus ride back, and the entire elevator trip filled with the same banal, inane pretend-humans.  
  
“A fine walk,” Kenta said neutrally.  
  
Leon glared at the man. “Don’t you start.”  
  
Kenta merely went back to watching the numbers go up as they ascended to the penthouse suites. Somehow, someway, despite wearing only an undershirt and loose shorts, the taller man had completely avoided any sort of environmental discomfort. No disgusting stickiness that Leon could see, no raised red patches where mosquitos decided to chance their luck with a dragon, not even a patch of sunburn. If anything, the man looked slightly more tan, despite the impossibly of such a rapid change in skin tone.  
  
The only explanation Leon could think of was powers, a change that answered several questions about the sculpted physiques of parahumans in general and was no more satisfying than explanations for rain.  
  
The elevator dinged again and Kenta stepped out, perfectly unruffled, as if he hadn’t just gone on the nature hike from hell. “I will see you at the wine tasting.”  
  
Leon didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he went into his room, stripped out of his sweat-stained clothes, and had his second shower of the day while contemplating whether a few glasses of booze was adequate compensation for several hours spent around the most miserable sort of creatures this world had to offer.  
  
Somewhere around changing into a white peasant top and loose black pants, he decided to give it three glasses.  
  
Now properly attired (with a layer of sunscreen and bug spray under the fabric), Leon made his way to the courtyard.  
  
Two women were already waiting there, dressed in the hotel’s uniform and smoking silently. They made to put out the cigarettes, then paused with Leon waved his hand dismissively.  
  
“Please. I’m here to get drunk in the name of art. Let’s not pretend like your vice is somehow less acceptable than mine.”  
  
The younger woman, more of a girl, really, hesitated, and the second sighed, fully dumping her cigarette in the ashtray. “Hotel policy, buddy. Guests aren’t allowed to see the staff smoking. Hurts the brand, smells up the building, and upsets the kiddo’s lungs.”  
  
Leon raised an eyebrow at that. “An odd thought. Never seemed to do me any harm.”  
  
The older woman shrugged and started for a table, where multiple bottles were already open and airing out. “I don’t around my grandkids. Filthy habit. Still don’t like how much a pain it is to get a puff at work.”  
  
She slapped the table. “Anyway, my name’s Teulia. Now then, what’ll you have? It’s close enough to one that I’m serving someone a drink, and it can’t be me that’s swallowing this swill down.”  
  
“I assume you mean that in jest,” Leon replied, stepping up and browsing the place cards made available. “What light whites do you recommend...?”  
  
Teulia looked towards the younger woman, who eventually noticed the weight of the gave and scrambled to a post behind the table and cleared her throat. “Natia. Uh, we have a variety of local and classic blends available. There’s a Reisling, a Chenin Blanc, and a Verdicchio from established vineyards, along with a few blends we purchase from the locals on a quarterly basis.”  
  
Leon smiled. Territory he was familiar with. At last. “But what do you recommend?”  
  
After a few seconds of silence, the girl pointed to a line of glasses in front of a bottle with a floral label Leon didn’t recognize. “Whenever we have work parties, I always grab a bottle of that for later. It runs out fast, and it’s light enough that you don’t have to spit out half the glass.”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with a little spitting when you’re trying for variety,” Leon countered, nonetheless picking up a glass. He swirled the liquid, frowning at the size of legs and viscosity. “As a general note, I dislike flavored syrup.”  
  
“Try it.” When Leon raised an eyebrow at the old woman, she nodded once. “Natia’s new to working front desk, but I let her pick drinks for a family event. She’s got good taste.”  
  
Leon took a cautious sniff. “Pineapple. White grapes.” He paused, then took another sniff, brows furrowing. “Pears?”  
  
Teulia smiled. “Keep going.”  
  
He put his nose a little closer to the glass, swirled it again, then inhaled. “A sweet flower of some sort, very mild, almonds, and...”  
  
He drew his head back. “Coconut?”  
  
“You got all of that from the smell?” Natia asked, tilting her head.  
  
“This is not the first time I’ve decided to seriously try wines,” Leon shot back.  
  
Then he took a sip.  
  
Sweet. Not so sweet as to be repulsive, but standing right on the edge. An interesting choice, and while not normally to Leon’s tastes...  
  
When in Rome.  
  
Leon swished the wine, letting the flavor completely fill his palette, then swallowed. He stepped back from the table, lowered the glass, and inhaled. Once he was sure the back of his throat could adequately feel the weight of the drink, he exhaled, redoubling the effect. He ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth, dissecting the sensation, nodding contemplatively. “Sweet, very light, and extraordinarily complex. Like the draft of a skyscraper before ground has been broken. Multiple layers to every component, but not so bold as to leave one incapable of moving past it.”  
  
He bowed. “Forgive my skepticism. For the duration of this event, I place myself fully at your disposal.”  
  
Natia blushed and pointed to a second row of glasses, this time light red. “This one’s also a local blend. A bit heavier and a lot more sour, but it sounds like you’re kinda looking for that.”  
  
Teulia cracked open a water bottle. “And the palette cleanser?”  
  
“Right!”  
  
More guests started arriving after Leon had moved on to a truly exceptional series of grapefruit-infused reds, but somehow the influx of the ignoramuses wasn’t as painful as it could’ve been. For one, the man in violently clashing-colors (Bill Gabbard, Cabbage to his friends) turned out to know something about wine, and for two knew he didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. The rest of the people there mostly kept to themselves, making bold and inaccurate claims about the alcohol they were imbibing, and shared smiles with the women serving let Leon know that he was not alone in his contempt. Cabbage shared about his granddaughters, Leon threw in his fears for Amy’s future in a world with Endbringers, and for a minute he almost felt like he was enjoying himself.  
  
Then Kenta showed up.  
  
He had not changed out of his undershirt and shorts. He did not pretend to listen to Natia when he plucked a glass of wine off the table, nor did he pretend to taste the drinks he guzzled. Attempts at small talk, grating as they were, went ignored. Leon considered what those actions were telling him, and frowned.  
  
It seemed that the dragon had come to drink to get drunk, and if the scowl on his face was any indication it seemed that he’d yet to achieve that goal.  
  
When a lull in the meaningless chatter came between Leon held up a finger. “If you would give me a moment, I would like to address the dragon in the room.”  
  
Cabbage looked over Leon’s shoulder, initially curious, then dismissive. “If you wanna go tell the monkey he’s not wanted, feel free. I’m going to go get more of this Chardonnay.”  
  
Leon nodded and peeled away, mentally severing his connection to Cabbage. A man’s worth was partially determined by the company he kept, and Leon did not care to have his value lowered if at all avoidable.  
  
It took a few minutes to make his way to the trellis where Kenta had settled himself. At this point he was drinking straight from the bottle, seemingly oblivious to the tittering laughter and smirks sent his way.  
  
Laughter and smirks that died as soon as Leon crossed into the ten-foot no-man’s land that separated the dragon from the commoners.  
  
Kenta turned to face him, a slight frown on his face. “What?”  
  
Leon took a second, swirling his wine glass to buy time, considering possible words.  
  
Then he put the glass down, plucked a fresh one from a nearby table, and held it out towards Kenta.  
  
“You appear to have a high ABV Bordeaux in your hands. An odd choice, this early in the day, but one I happen to share. Though the optimal aeration time is likely past I would more than enjoy a glass, should you be willing to share it. For a beverage that strong it may enhance the flavor rather than compromise it.”  
  
When Kenta didn’t respond immediately, Leon took another step forward and inclined his head. “That is, unless you intend to finish it all yourself.”  
  
For a long moment the courtyard was silent.  
  
Then the bottle in Kenta’s hand exploded.  
  
Leon flinched. Enough to bring his hands forward, to have a layer of protection under his skin should it be necessary. He didn’t fill the air with bone flak though, a momentary delay that he blamed on the wine.  
  
When the shock had passed, Leon took in the scene.  
  
Kenta was unharmed. It was the body of the bottle which had popped, not the neck, leaving the man with a glass shiv in his hands. His face was perfectly blank, his clothes still unstained, but the ground behind and around him was littered with emerald fragments. Little wine, but he’d used his fire on the liquid inside the bottle that was to be expected.  
  
The dragon man held up the glass tub in his hand, a few dark drops clinging stubbornly to the jagged ends. “Enjoy.” His hand went down, then up, and Leon watched impassively as the glass flew through the air, landed well short of him, and shattered against the cobblestones.  
  
Gesture made, Kenta turned around and began walking away. Leon followed the man with his eyes, slowly letting the bone under his skin receded to something like normal. Kenta turned towards the lobby, not the elevators, and exchanged a few words with the receptionist. Moments later a car pulled up, Kenta got in, and Leon was once again alone at the party.  
  
“What a bore.”  
  
When Leon turned around, everyone was nodding while no one was meeting his eye.  
  
“He didn’t even pretend to know what he was drinking. Should’ve filled a bottle with Bud Lite and told him it was champagne. Not like he could tell the difference.”  
  
“And did you see the tattoos? The muscles? Clearly a gangster. How did he even get in here?”  
  
“And did you see what he was wearing? Who goes to a wine tasting in cargo shorts and a tank top? He must have blown all his money on the plane tickets and hotel room.”  
  
Leon considered the words, thinking back ten years, to a party filled with music he didn’t understand, words he couldn’t pronounce, and bared teeth that could technically be considered smiles. He put himself back in the shoes of his fifteen-year-old self, nervous and excited and terrified all at once, arrogant and self-conscious, completely incapable of asking for or receiving help if it was offered free of charge. He remembered his first taste of wine, the realization that there was no real difference between the stuff in glass bottles and the stuff in cardboard boxes, and the irritation that he’d been scammed out of twenty bucks.  
  
He remembered what it’d been like not to get it, and his grip on his glass tightened fractionally.  
  
Someone tapped his shoulder. “You alright?”  
  
Leon looked to the side. It was Teulia, wearing tight lips and tense eyes.  
  
“You’ve been spacing out for a solid minute. Do I need to cut you off?” she asked.  
  
He looked out over the sea of self-important sycophants, and nodded curtly. “I’ve had enough for today, I think.”


	5. Chapter 5

“And now, a moment of silence for the brave men who served aboard the _U.S.S. Arizona_.”  
  
Kenta hadn’t said a word all day.  
  
Normally, any humiliation Kenta felt was swiftly burned away in an act of extraordinary violence. His underlings new better than to assault his pride, capes he could ravage with impunity, and when civilians tried to pull shit with him there’d be half a dozen ABB gangsters with baseballs bats waiting at their house inside of a two hours. In Brockton Bay, _no one_ fucked with Lung and got away with it.  
  
Except Lung wasn’t in Brockton Bay. Kenta was in Honolulu, storing his fury, glaring at the primary source of it as the slim, waif-like man stared up neutrally at the stone wall carved with eleven hundred-some names.  
  
People were staring at him. People from the wine-tasting. People he’d never see after this week, and thus mostly irrelevant. If he truly wanted revenge on the minnows, he’d set a hacker to examine the guest list of the tour he was on and mail them napalm. Simple, effective, and destructive enough to content him.  
  
Then there was Marquis.  
  
A truce. Kenta had no interest in fighting a war against one of the major powers in the city, and wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d win anything other than a fight he’d prepared for to perfection. He’d agreed to it, taken his small revenge for being given an ultimatum, and that was that.  
  
Then Leon had dragged his ignorance out into the public eye. Had cornered him into a social paradox where his choices were to show weakness or fail. Had humiliated him, above and beyond what Kenta had done.  
  
Scales shifted under his skin, and Kenta tamped them down.  
  
Not yet.  
  
He’d taken the back-most seat again. The woman from yesterday sat next to him again. She talked to him, to herself, for the entire trip down to the harbor. The clashing man had given him a look when they walked through the aviation museum. The guide didn’t look at him at all.  
  
Leon acted as if nothing had changed.  
  
They walked by a tourist cart on their way to the battleship _Missouri_ , filled with plastic flowers, snow globes, and tee shirts. A string of fairy lights light caught fire, the person staffing the register panicked, and Kenta felt marginally more relaxed.  
  
Get hit, hit back. A simple formula, and one that had served him well.  
  
As they went through the ship’s quarters, gun decks, and war rooms, Kenta considered his words carefully. It wouldn’t do to be to obvious, nor too subtle. He’d need to strike a balance between provoking the man and being clearly within the bounds of their agreement. A truce, a decision not to fight, to not bring the battle to a scale where neither could win. The social web surrounding such vague terms at once allowed for remarkable leway and explicitly banned the majority of potentially dangerous actions.  
  
It was, however, ultimately an agreement between Lung and Marquis, a business transaction and little more, designed to ensure the assumed mutually assured destruction never had to be tested. Russia versus the US, before Scion, game theory where risk weighed against risk in what was ultimately a cold-blooded decision not to fight.  
  
Kenta and Leon, however, could apparently use words with impunity.  
  
“And here is where Japan formally surrendered to the United States.” The guide turned around, facing the group with an uncharacteristically solemn expression. “Here is where the Second World War effectively ended for the US. Not in Italy. Not in Germany. On this boat, this deck, in the shadows of these guns, one empire fell and another began to rise. We can only imagine the thoughts floating through Shigemitsu’s mind when he signed the agreements, but here... you can almost imagine what it felt like.”  
  
Perfect.  
  
“Perhaps he was thinking about the next generation.”  
  
Message delivered, Kenta let himself tune out and listen to the waves. The group would stay for a few more minutes, taking pictures and talking amongst themselves, but the tour was more or less over. He had little interest in WWII, and less on American opinions of it. People had fought, people had died, and the Pacific was much the same after it.  
  
Of what interest was a wreck to the living.  
  
A sharp, heavy pain struck Kenta right below his skull. His body went dead, and before he could call so much as lighter’s worth of flame into the real a second blow hammered home at the back of his skull and Kenta knew no more.

  
  
  
  
  
  
Pain woke him up.  
  
“I am going to explain this exactly one time, you gutter-trash mobster. One time, and after that there will be no mercy whatsoever. No second chances, no benefit of the doubt, no _accidents_. Only suffering and death.”  
  
Kenta blinked, trying to put his thoughts in order. A ball of agony erupted in his eye, forcing his mind and partial vision into clarity. His hands clenched, seizing sand when the other shot open, and he reached for fire with his power, as much as he could handle—  
  
And what he saw gave him pause.  
  
Marquis was terrified. His teeth were bared, lips twitching up and down in a mad dance between nervous laughter and abject misery. Every tendon on his neck stood out like a wire, gone tight as it could and then a few notches more tense. One of his eyes had burst a vessel, red half-outlining brown, the other obscured by wet hair plastered over half his face.  
  
He also had one hand on Kenta’s face, bone down Kenta’s throat, and a pricking pressure on Kenta's neck.  
  
Kenta tried to think quiet thoughts.  
  
“My child is off limits. I know you don’t care about the law, or convention, or silly things like that, but I do know you care about your life. That, plus my word, are the only reasons you’re still alive right now.” His words were without inflection. Stressless. If Kenta closed his eyes, the terms would seem more at home in a boardroom than somewhere on a beach.  
  
“Amy is far more important than my word. She is infinitely more important than you. Any threat sent her way is one I will always take seriously. You may not have known that. You may have assumed, somehow, that the terms of our truce permitted you to joke. To jest.”  
  
The pressure on his throat grew, as did the depth of the pain in his eyes, and Lung gasped. Or tried to.  
  
“I am formally disabusing you of that notion. From here on out, your mind will never touch on her. You will forget the fact that she exists. If, god forbid, someone else finds out, you will kill them, then inform me of the leak on your knees, begging forgiveness. Your soldiers will refuse to enter any district she happens to be in. In the event you find yourself fighting by her, you will promptly give up and let your opponents kill you instead of risking her in the collateral damage. The mere _thought_ of harming her is a crime against the universe, and you will do _literally everything in your power_ to ensure it doesn’t happen.”  
  
Marquis paused, taking a single shuddering breath.  
  
Then he twisted and Kenta’s mind went white.  
  
When he came back to reality, Marquis was looking down at him, lips still twitching, expression still manic. “Do you understand, gutter-trash mobster? Do you understand the _depth_ of your fuck up?”  
  
When Kenta didn’t respond Marquis twisted again. _“SAY IT!”_  
  
“I understand!” Kenta gasped, spine arcing, trying to get an inch farther from the pain.  
  
“Good.” A sick squelching noise rang out, and moments later Kenta could feel his body again. Wet, heavy, and in more pain than he remembered putting himself through for far too long.  
  
For a minute he lay there, panting.  
  
Something thumped next to Kenta’s head, and he flinched. When his eye had finished healing, he turned to look at it.  
  
It was money.  
  
“For the trip back to the hotel.” When he looked up, Kenta saw Leon putting himself back in order. Hair went behind one ear, bloodied bone went into the sea, and wet clothes wee squeezed free of water. “I will make my own way back. That should be enough for a taxi.”  
  
He bowed stiffly, mouth set into a frown. “I will see you at the cruise ship brunch tomorrow.”  
  
Kenta let him pad away, staying down and beaten until he couldn’t hear the sound of soggy sandals on sand any more.  
  
Then he gave it another five minutes just to be sure.  
  
And five more.  
  
On the thirtieth minute he realized just how bad he’d fucked up.  
  


* * *

  
  
_Gutter-punk trash_.  
  
Leon was not thinking about the beach.  
  
 _Violent, disgraceful, low-blooded thug._  
  
Instead, he was carefully trimming his beard.  
  
 _Jackboot, uneducated, illiterate hillbilly._  
  
Once that was done, he packed away his scissors, brushed his teeth, and changed into his pyjamas. Silk, with a monogramed name. Say what you would about Brockton Bay, it still had some excellent seamstresses.  
  
 _Why the fuck did you think you could fit in with us?_  
  
He lay on his back, stared at the ceiling, and tried not to think about the beach.  
  
Leon thought about past. About the days when he didn’t have powers. Glass-bottled drinks and Chinese take-out had been fine dining, pensions and retirement weren’t going to happen, and lotto tickets were a Friday night’s entertainment.  
  
He’d had friends then. Good ones, who he could commit felonies with. They’d stolen cars, broken into houses, even mugged a few people. He’d dropped out of school, picked up a job, and expected to live out the rest of his fifty year life doing what his father had done.  
  
And then he’d met Alissa.  
  
She’d had money. She reeked of it. It was in the new-car smell her Mercedes never seemed to lose, the casual three pieces of real jewelry she wore everywhere, and the way she expected people to have free time for her. On _really_ rich people had the free time to just _do things_ , damn the schedule, and Alissa had more fuck-you in her right foot than most people could muster up in their whole lives.  
  
They hadn’t been in love. Hadn’t even really liked one another. Leon had represented a way out of going to college or getting married for her, and she’d been little more than a meal ticket for him. They’d had sex a time or two, mostly while more than a little drunk, and that had been the extent of their relationship.  
  
Then the party. Then the attempt to fit in with the other rich kids. Then the reveal. Then being dragged out to a nearby alleyway, his cheap, rented tux tearing in the hands of Alissa’s bodyguards, being beaten by her father as he shouted, red-faced and bloody-knuckled, a string of invective and hate filling Leon’s ears as his flesh bruised and broke, unable to even _pretend_ that he fit in—  
  
Leon closed his eyes, flared his nostrils, and got out of bed.  
  
Allison was dead now. Her father had passed away sometime after she did. He kept tabs on her family for when (if) Amy wanted to know about the other half of her family tree. A little research had given him stories of strife and struggle, of brave pioneers championing new fields, the American dream so frequently talked about and so rarely achieved. Living examples of American exceptionalism, proof that if someone worked hard enough they could create enough wealth to empower generations.  
  
On his side were farmers. Farmers, farmers, and more farmers, followed by laborers, construction workers, steel workers, dock workers, and more varieties of blue collar jobs than he could count. The kind of workers that got by on being willing to do physically demanding things for peanuts, shacked up with the first girl they got pregnant, and died when something went wrong in their chest. Normal folk, at least to him.  
  
His own mother was still alive. She got a cheque every month which said it came from a pension fund. She did quite well for herself, and had her personal friend group. He made sure to visit, to bring by Amy from time to time, even if Ella couldn’t quite take care of a child on her own anymore. She didn’t know he had powers, and Leon intended for her to die not knowing.  
  
No one needed to borrow stress from him.  
  
After pulling on some real clothes, Leon peeked out into the hallway. When there wasn’t a furious rage dragon preparing to kill him, he made his way to the elevator, down to the lobby, and into the bar. Teulia saw him and made for a bottle of open wine.  
  
Leon raised a hand. “Beer. In a can.”  
  
Teulia reached under the bar, pulled up two silver cylinders with garish colors printed on, and slid one over to him. “You know it’s all free, right? You’ve got the executive pass.”  
  
He nodded, popped the tab with a reflexive twist that never faded away completely, and took a sip. It tasted like stale piss, and only the coolness and carbonation gave the liquor any saving grace.  
  
Leon shrugged and left the bottle to stand. “I know, but right now I want a beer.”  
  
Once the booze reached room temperature, Leon knocked it back in one long, steady motion, then moved on to the next one. Teulia brought up two more, and when Leon let them sit again started bringing up cans until he gestured at her to stop.  
  
She eyed the row of aluminum on the counter, then left to talk with the only other customer.  
  
Marquis possessed neither time nor sympathy for errors. If one made a mistake while in his service, either preventable or reasonably expectable, one would meet a terminal end. Simple, fast, and a punishment which ensured his soldiers were always more afraid of him than of the enemy. Success received generous rewards, and the binary distinction between actions performed correctly and failure served to minimize the time spent bickering over who did what and why and maximize the speed at which an actionable conclusion could be reached.  
  
When confronted with a personal problem, Leon would drink like a machine until he stopped caring about it and trust future-Leon to figure it out.  
  
Downing a gallon of alcohol required finding a rhythm. Breath, gulp, repeat until the can was empty. Crush the useless container between your hands, wing it at the nearest trash can, and when you couldn’t make it you’d had enough to justify stopping. Crude, dangerous if you had any sort of skill with projectile weaponry, and not a productive use of time.  
  
Cracking open his fifth beer, Leon found that he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.  
  
This was supposed to be a vacation. A chance to unwind. To get away from it all. To enjoy the fruits of his labor, rest on his laurels, and have his cake to eat. Ill-gotten gains begged to be spent, to return to their pockets from whence they came, a cycle of thievery, expenditure, investment, and more thievery, of which the criminal elements was but one small part. By all rights he should’ve been riding high, living large, and simply taking pleasure in the state of _being rich_.  
  
And yet he’d had to endure an eleven hour plane ride. And yet he’d gone on a hike he been miserable on. And yet he’d somehow ended up in more danger, with more to lose, than if he’d simply rented a boat for a week and gone deep-sea fishing in the bay.  
  
Leon counted the beers. He could still do that, so he wasn’t drunk yet. Not really. He counted the beers, then tallied up how much they’d have cost at the corner store, all those years ago.  
  
He snorted, popping open another.  
  
Not worth it.  
  
Eventually Leon worked his way through the booze on the bartop, at which point Teulia politely cut him off. Leon nodded in agreement, sipped water for the rest of her shift, and when a new boy came on wheedled a few more cans out of him.  
  
Then a few more.  
  
And more.  
  
And more.  
  
By the time it’d hit last call, Leon could no longer sink the flattened disks of beer. He hadn’t stopped drinking because the boy had taken the cans away when he was done, and that counted. He’d also counted all the beers he drank, converted them into money, the money into time, and the time into dish washed, and had come to the tentative conclusion that he’d drunk his weight in food.  
  
“Man, you are fucked up,” the boy said.  
  
Leon considered the words, rewound his memory a few seconds, and realized he’d said the comment out loud.  
  
The boy shook his head, swabbing wood and gently pushing Leon’s elbow. “Dude, go to sleep. You’ve got shit to do in the morning or something, and I need to clean this before one.”  
  
Leon briefly considered holding the bartender hostage in order to secure more beer, then reluctantly pushed away from the bar. A quick application of osteokinesis steady him, and he began making his way back towards the elevator.  
  
Step one of the problem-solving process was complete. The next part involved an action of some kind. Any action, because dithering around inevitably caused wounds to fester rather than heal. No, Leon need to act, the sooner the better.  
  
Dully, he realized he hadn’t actually pushed the call button.  
  
The ding it made seemed more musical somehow.  
  
Action. Leon had to convince Kenta that, despite the attempted murder, inducing paraplegia, gouging out an eye, and death threats were calm, rational responses which were completely in line with how things should be and were not cause for worry. Worried people took risks, risks tended to turn out poorly, and the more poorly they turned out the more danger Amy would be in.  
  
The doors opened and Leon stumbled in. He needed to connect Kenta’s continued well-being to Amy’s, and he needed to make Kenta think it was his idea. Somehow, someway, the idea of Amy in pain needed to become as absurdly distressing to the dragon man as it was to Leon. The paraplegia, eye-gouging, and death threats were a start, but they lacked the personal drive which made goals _stick_.  
  
Halfway up to his room, the answer hit him.  
  
“I have to make Kenta a father.”


	6. Chapter 6

Kenta was an old friend to fear.

There was the fear of disappointing others. He’d learned about that early, when his grades weren’t perfect. There was the fear of not fitting, a drive which had sent him right into the arms of Daiichi. There was the fear of inadequacy, which had made him face down Leviathan, followed by the fear of slavery, which had forced him to develop his mind. Each had its own flavor, its own proper response, and over time Kenta had grown used to them. Not immune, not content with, but capable of coping.

The fear of death had been so omnipresent over the past decade of his life that he’d almost grown more used to it than not.

The first step was assessing how much control he could actually exercise over a given result. While Legend represented an existential threat to every villain in the Americas, practically speaking there was very little one could do in order to avoid death by high-altitude bombardment and thus most simply lived knowing that they were only ever protected by the buffer of tasks above them on Legend's to-do list.

In the version of the future where Marquis decided that him being alive was an unacceptable risk?

The chances of Kenta meaningfully interacting with that course of action had been made painfully clear.

Kenta therefore decided that worrying about the universe where Marquis murdered him without allowing for counterplay wasn’t productive and moved to other possibilities.

The first thing he did was clean himself up. A plaid button up, dark jeans, and a nicer pair of shoes. More than what he’d prefer to wear, and enough to boil a regular human in eighty degree weather, but brute ratings let one get away with somewhat environment-inappropriate dress. A blast of fire (that hurt like a bitch) took care of any stubble that had grown overnight, and his good watch completed the look.

The tattoos were still visible at his neck, but covering up those would be too far.

Properly dressed, Kenta went down to the lobby and began reading the itinerary. A cruise, a meal, and then free time on a beach before a traditional Luau. There was also shark diving for a limited number of tourists and a volleyball tournament, though the prize for the latter was unspecified. Certainly not money, and a trophy would be a meaningless display of only relative skill.

On second thought, the reward was almost certainly a trophy. An artsy one. With seashells.

By the time the bus rolled around, Kenta had memorized the schedule and formed most of a plan. He would find a quiet opportunity to talk to Leon, formally apologize for escalating the conflict, and offer what he could to balance the scales.

The fact that he knew exactly what he wanted to talk about probably meant the subject material wasn’t on the same scale, but the attempt would be the thing that mattered.

This time, Kenta took a seat at the front of the bus. An aisle seat. People filed past him, and uncomfortable amounts of eye contact kept anyone from trying to take the window. On the way to brunch would be the most convenient time to apologize, and let him spend the rest of the day on his own.

The bus filled up, the driver called the last-minute warning, and five minutes after that Leon arrived.

His hair was a mess. No ponytail, a light sheen that looked like grease, and a mush to his beard which made it seem like he’d slept on it. His shirt was untucked, misbuttoned, and wrinkled enough to double as an elephant skin. A pair of large, dark shades covered his eyes, and Kenta didn’t need to use his enhanced senses to catch the reek of alcohol.

Leon scanned the bus, face firmly neutral, until his hidden eyes settled on the seat beside Kenta.

After a moment, Kenta moved to the side.

Once Leon day down, the bus started up. Jabbering among the other tourists began almost immediately, but Kenta waited a few minutes to begin himself.

“I’m—“

Leon held up his hand. “Stop.”

Kenta stopped.

The remainder of the bus ride passed in silence between the two. Kenta looked straight forward, while Leon rested his head on the window, riding along with the slight bumps in the road without so much as a whisper. Boarding the ship involved a similar lack of fanfare, and the two of them mutely stacked their plates together.

After claiming a table on the forward-most deck, Kenta tried again.

“I am—”

“Food.”

Kenta ground his teeth as Leon began systematically layering eggs and bacon on toast, wolfing down the open-faced sandwich in half a dozen bites or fewer, and moving on to another one. Intermittently the man would quaff a glass of water and a large coffee, the latter so strong that Kenta could smell it from across the table, and after shaking his head go back to eating.

It took forty minutes for Leon to finish eating, and when he finally came down to the last glass of water Kenta had been done with his croissant for half an hour.

“Leon—”

“One last thing.”

The man poured some water into his hands, pulled off his sunglasses, and slapped himself.

Kenta waited while Leon washed his face, seething.

After tucking a few strands of hair behind one ear, Leon put his elbows on the table, leaned forward, and stared with slightly-less bloodshot eyes at Kenta. “Now then, what did you want to say to me?”

Kenta briefly considers searing his eyebrows off.

“I would like to apologize.”

Leon blinked. Blearily. “Come again?”

“I underestimated your devotion to your daughter.” Each word felt worked from stone. It had to be said though, the sooner the better. “I made a comment in error, and find your response appropriate.”

“I am sorry, and firmly affirm my commitment to our truce.”

Leon stared.

Kenta stared back.

Leon took out a quarter and dropped it on the table.

Kenta kept staring.

“Apology accepted,” Leon said, finally, finally, breaking eye contact. “As additional compensation for the distress you put me through, I would beg your company for the remainder of our trip.”

Kenta furrowed his brow. “Why?”

Leon’s shoulders slumped. “The tense silence of our interactions is infinitely preferable to any and all conversation the peons also taking this tour can offer.”

He didn’t smile. It would’ve been undignified. “Imagine having to hear all of them at once?”

“You have enhanced senses?”

Fuck.

Leon lifted up what was left of his water. “A remarkable card to have kept hidden for so long. It’s a good thing we’ve agreed to an indefinite truce, no?”

Kenta considered the glass.

Then he lifted his empty coffee mug.

“Indeed.”

* * *

Six coffees, eight waters, enough food four four people, and perhaps the least-predictable surrender Leon had ever been on the receiving end of later and he felt almost human. The headache had receded from ‘agonizing’ to ‘irritating,’ his throat had shifted from ‘cotton mill’ to ‘gravel path,’ and he had one fewer individuals to watch carefully for signs of aggression.

Instead, he contented himself with watching Kenta casually.

The man cleaned up well. Leon knew enough people with ink to ignore it in professional environments, but frankly speaking he thought Kenta looked better with the garish dragons covered up. A clean shave highlighted the sharp edges of his jaw while showing off skin clear enough that it had to be a parahuman ability, and had the added benefit of making him seem a few years younger. Not a child, but also not old enough to be considered anything but a young man.

And he had a young man’s build. A young man who went to the gym religiously, had good genes, and maybe took some steroids on the side. Parahumans ranged from ‘achingly beautiful’ to ‘astonishingly grotesque,’ sometimes in the same person, but in Leon’s experience the scale skewed towards the attractive. Whether that was because more attractive people got powers more frequently (which he doubted) or powers made people attractive (which he found plausible), few parahumans were south of a seven for Leon.

Kenta in particular, however...

Leon sighed and moved his gaze away, to the noticeably less-attractive people hobnobbing on the deck below.

Having been in a relationship with a significant power imbalance, Leon had no desire to repeat the experience. On the other hand, now the shoe was on the other foot. From a purely physical perspective, there were perhaps a dozen parahumans in North America who he wasn’t confident in his ability to kill. A few dozen more would give him a run for his money, there were the wildcards he simply didn’t know enough about, and some of his assessments were almost certainly wrong, but in a very general sense his self-imposed limit of ‘must be able to fight multiple parahumans at once and win’ made meeting with potential partners difficult.

A woman noticed him looking and winked back. Leon smiled enigmatically and shifted his gaze, pointedly scanning a different section of the crowd.

Amy had entered her drawings into a school art fair once. She’d received a ribbon for participation, and when Leon explained to her that everyone got one she threw it away, fell to her knees, and sobbed for twenty minutes straight.

Ice cream and father/daughter bonding time had soothed those ruffled feathers down, but reflecting back on it Leon couldn’t help but find her reaction profound. A prize anyone could get meant nothing, and to receive such a symbol for the fruits one one’s labor was an insult of the greatest degree. He’d saved the ribbon (of course), but as a personal memento, not a mark of skill.

In his opinion the judges had been biased, but art was subjective and perhaps they simply didn’t understand her genius.

Romance was not so different. One night stands were not hard to acquire when you had both money and power, and the lack of effort required meant Leon found little value in pursuing them. When one knew the right places and had deep enough pockets carnal attractions quickly lost their novelty, and the nature of one-night stands necessarily left the emotional component too shallow for any sort of connection.

Leon contented himself with friendships. A tryst with either of his lieutenants was out of the question, and searching for a lover and confidant among unaffiliated parahumans had too many issues to name. Instead he would watch while Edward landscaped, or enjoy a ball game with Casey, or find something to do with the men while not wearing a mask.

That final choice had led to his first kiss with a boy, and after the initial shock faded he’d found that he liked it.

Leon felt his expression soften.

He stood up. “I will be back momentarily.” When Kenta gave him a questioning look, he nodded towards the white male and female caricatures. “The lavatory.”

Kenta grunted, turning his gaze back to the ocean. A part of Leon wondered at what it would be like to have more powerful eyes, or a nose that could tell the difference between an opened and unopened bottle of wine. That part wanted him to stick around, to prod Kenta for answers, to see where things went. He knew so little about the man, and the scraps Leon had pointed to a story begging to be told.

The rest of him decided not to push it.


	7. Chapter 7

Kenta looked out at the ocean. An iridescent shade of green-blue, with enough wind to encourage light waves and fill his nose with salt. A perfect day, the kind that came around once every few years in Brockton, and not an accident according to the tour guide, though no less beautiful for its intentional perfection. Not to him, at least. Other could comment on whether the manufactured nature of the ‘natural phenomenon’ robbed the sight of its meaning, but to Kenta the distinction between what was and wasn’t an acceptable seemed drawn mostly at random.  
  
He took in the vista for another minute, then turned to the side. “Why are we here?”  
  
“In an existential sense, no one knows. In a practical sense, to enjoy the weather.” Leon had stripped down to a pair of plain white jams, oiled up, and laid down on a towel with a minuscule pair of tanning goggles on. “Are you enjoying the weather?”  
  
Kenta clenched one fist. “I have been enjoying the weather for an hour. I believe I have enjoyed the weather as much as it needs to be enjoyed, then some.”  
  
Leon extended one arm towards the somewhat-distant noise of talking. “You could engage with the other tourists.”  
  
“Not if they were the last humans on earth.”  
  
Leon’s arm dropped back to his side. “Then I would suggest talking to a guide and seeking out alternative entertainment. Failing that, find a secluded cove and melt some sand into glass.”  
  
Kenta filed the second suggestion away for later consideration and got up. He’d kept his clothes on, one of many decision which separated him from the other beach-goers. Frisbee games stopped to let him pass, children fell quiet, and hands crossed over chests. He ignored it all, searching for a specific head of hair.  
  
He found the guide at a bar, staring into a tumbler with brown and white liquor pooling at the bottom. After taking a seat next to the man, the guide’s face switched into a grin. “How can I help you, mister—”  
  
“Do not pretend you are happy to see me.” Kenta snapped, then pointed at the cans of cheap beer once he had the bartender's attention. Sometimes, the familiar was best. “I do not for suck-ups. I give you money, you share information, and we part ways.”  
  
The guide tilted his head to the side in a short, sharp motion. “The smile is part of the experience. Take that away and suddenly stars disappear, rumors pop up, and there’s a new native-looking person with a working knowledge of the local flora and fauna taking people around the island.”  
  
He took another sip of his drink, then pushed the nearly-empty glass away, sitting up in his seat. “Now then, how can I help you, mister Takahashi?”  
  
Kenta considered his beer.  
  
Then he shrugged, popped the tab, and took a long, deep pull.  
  
After putting the can down, he motioned to the beach. “What is there to do which does not involve sand. I am aware of the shark diving, which the itinerary did not provide extensive detail on.”  
  
The guide shrugged. “We hand out tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. Two individuals will be lowered into shark-infested waters, surrounded by a steel cage and accompanied by several professionals, in order to see and touch live sharks. Sessions are up to thirty minutes long.”  
  
Kenta nodded. A diversion, at the very least. “When is the next time slot?”  
  
“Five.”  
  
Kenta looked around the bar for a clock, eventually settling on a monstrosity that looked life it was made half from crustaceans, half from fish. “It is eleven.”  
  
The guide shrugged again. “Several couples approached me on the boat over here. You can talk to one of them about switching around slots.”  
  
After receiving the list of names, Kenta finished his beer, stepped away from the bar, and prepared himself for the task ahead.  
  
Intimidation.  
  


* * *

  
  
When a shadow fell across his face, Leon opened his eyes. When he saw Kenta looming above him, hands clenched in barely-restrained fury, he closed them again. “I don’t suppose you found a secluded alcove to melt sand in.”  
  
“This is your fault.”  
  
Ah.  
  
Diversion.  
  
Leon reacher up, pulled away his goggles, and looked up at Kenta. “What am I being accused of?”  
  
Kenta lifted his arm and dropped a crumpled piece of paper by Leon’s head. Because it wasn’t aimed at him, Kenta got to keep the arm. “Because I kept you company, I did not have the time to register for shark diving.”  
  
“Do you dive for sharks? Cook what you catch?”  
  
“You dive among sharks,” Kenta corrected, still scowling. “And the next time slot is at five.”  
  
Leon shrugged and moved his goggles back down. “So exchange time slots. Bribery and threats work equally well.”  
  
A silence stretched out.  
  
“If you were to place any of these people on the streets of Brockton Bay, no one would find their bodies,” Kenta hissed.  
  
“You actually tried threatening and bribing civilians.” Not a question. A statement.  
  
More silence.  
  
Leon raised an eyebrow. “Did you succeed.”  
  
“Several couples attempted to call the police. Several more began shouting at me to draw attention. A third cowered behind his wife while she picked up an umbrella and attempted to strike me.  
  
A growl escaped the dragon man. “One pair propositioned me.”  
  
Leon was much too disciplined to let his face show amusement. Instead, he contented himself with imagining the expression on Kenta’ face as he retreated from a woman a head shorter and forty pounds lighter than him.  
  
“I still fail to see how this is my problem,” Leon said, shifting around lay on his front. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, you’re blocking my sun.” When Kenta didn’t move, Leon twisted his head. “Well?”  
  
Kenta’s expression was neutral again. “You owe me.”  
  
Leon continued staring.  
  
“Your compensation incurred costs I did not intend to pay. I require reparations.”  
  
“I don’t believe compensation or reparations work that way,” Leon said carefully.  
  
Kenta bared his teeth. “The volleyball tournament starts in twenty minutes.”  
  
Leon’s mind went blank. “Why on earth do you want to enter a volleyball tournament?”  
  
“ _We_ ” — Kenta stressed the word — “are going to acquire the first place trophy, then exchange it for a more convenient time slot.”  
  
“You have yet to convince me that joining you in this quest makes any sense at all.” And yet the idea had appeal. Leon wasn’t going to perfect his tan in the two days left, and it’d been some time since he’d done anything as viscerally physical as a competitive sport.  
  
Kenta crouched down, eyes narrowed. “You will do it because otherwise I will engage in as much petty mischief as I can in order to ensure your continued misery for the next five hours.”  
  
Leon passively noted that Kenta had exceptionally pretty eyes.  
  
Then he pulled his body back, rolled up to kneeling, and pulled off the tanning glasses. After blinking and letting his eyes adjust to the light, Leon stood up, gathered together his towel and lotions, and nodded once.  
  
“I will reluctantly aid you on this endeavor. Now then, where do we sign up?”  
  
Kenta tilted his head, then turned around and pointed towards a pair of metal poles in the distance. “Eleven teams have already registered. Single elimination. Have you played before?”  
  
Leon nodded as they began walking. “Keep the ball off the ground, don’t touch it twice in a row, and don’t hit the net.”  
  
“It is unlikely in the extreme that the tournament organizers will use traditional rules. This means that we will likely not have to win each set by two points, nor that we will have to win multiple sets against a single team. The goal will almost certainly be fifteen points, with no rotating serve, nor strict enforcement of anything besides net violations.”  
  
Kenta turned to glare at Leon, a dark and stormy look on his face. “I was forced to play volleyball for five years of my youth. Today, I reap my revenge.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Fourteen-four, match point to Ellis/Waverly.”  
  
Kenta had to wonder where it all went wrong.  
  
Perhaps it had been the influx of individuals other than his fellow tourists. Perhaps it had been the decision by the guide to add best-in-house tickets to the nighttime Luau to the prize pool. Perhaps it had been the inexplicably hardcore referees, who wouldn’t stand for the corner-case exploitations Kenta had been planning.  
  
Or perhaps it had been the moment Kenta served into the net and realized he hadn’t played volleyball for literal decades and appeared to have the skill of a fifth grader.  
  
“Could we get a moment?” Kenta felt a hand on his shoulder. “I need to have a discussion with my partner.”  
  
The withered woman on the referee’s seat frowned, checked her stopwatch, and nodded once. “You have three minutes, then no more for the rest of the tournament.”  
  
She smirked. “However long or short that is.”  
  
Kenta nearly snarled, but settled for a dirty look as he let himself be led away. Once out of earshot Leon’s arm shifted over to Kenta’s shoulders. It was an awkward position, and when Kenta refused to bend down to accommodate the height difference eventually dropped away.  
  
“I think I should serve.”  
  
Kenta growled. “Never.”  
  
Leon shook his head. “You’ve sent the ball into the net every single time. The only points we got were when a rally went our way. Do you want to play to win or attempt to nurse your bruised ego?”  
  
“Why do you care?” he snarled. “I forced you to join this inane competition. There’s nothing in it for you!”  
  
“The shark diving tickets take two at a time. That’s something.” Leon looked over his shoulder, and the referee lifted her watch meaningfully. “Beyond that, I simply refuse to put anything less than the absolute maximum effort into any activity I engage in.”  
  
After letting that sink in, Leon leaned forward. “Also, stop hiding your powers. There aren’t any cameras here, and playing the net seems like a good place to have an eight foot vertical leap.”  
  
A whistle rang out. “Lavere/Takahashi, your tactical timeout is over. Please return to the arena or be disqualified.”  
  
Kenta padded back, feet sinking into the sand. Leon had already taken the back position, caught the volleyball tossed to him with one hand, and began tossing it from hand to hand.  
  
“Well?” he asked.  
  
Kenta went to the net.  
  
Through the mesh, Karrin smiled vapidly back at him. “Well, just know that even if you lose, it’s the participation that counts!”  
  
Kenta stopped holding back his power.  
  
“Serve.” The ball flew over the net. Not fast, not hard, but deep towards the back right corner, and Karrin’s boyfriend/husband/whoever the fuck barely managed to throw himself under it in time, sending it back over Kenta’s head.  
  
He let it go, the trust rewarded seconds later as the ball went back up into the air. Back and forth, pong for pong, the rally went on. On the other hand, the scent of sweat from the other side of the arena became stronger and stronger, while Kenta just kept staring at Karrin, letting his rage slowly grow.  
  
Eventually, the boyfriend made a sort pass. Karrin leapt, hand reaching up to bounce the ball further, a triumphant smile on her face—  
  
And then Kenta jumped higher than any human should’ve been able to reached out and over the net, and smacked the fucking ball into her smug fucking face.  
  


* * *

  
  
After carting away the woman with a broken nose, the boyfriend withdrew. Kenta and Leon advanced to the next match, with a warning not to perform similar actions in the future.  
  
Kenta and Leon listened, gave the words all the consideration it deserved, then went for drinks.  
  
“How many rounds will this tournament be?” Leon had waved away alcohol when offered, and was instead sipping on a glass of coconut milk and pineapple juice. There’d be time for liquor later in the night.  
  
Kenta drummed the bar top with one hand, pursing his lips. “Twenty four competitors, single elimination. Twenty four to twelve to six to four to finals. As low-seeds, we will likely have to play five total matches.”  
  
Leon clicked his tongue. “Even assuming multiple matches are going at once, even assuming the higher-skill individuals win against people quickly, that’s going to be a narrow window to win the tournament, trade the trophy for the tickets, and then make our way to shark diving boat. You likely could have waited and ended up with a similar time frame.”  
  
Kenta’s hand stopped. “But then I would be waiting while staring out at nothing instead of showing a group of ignorant tourists the difference between myself and them.”  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
For a few minutes the two of them simply enjoyed their drinks.  
  
“How precise is your pyrokinesis?”  
  
When Lung didn’t respond, Leon sighed. It wasn’t paranoia if people legitimately were out to get you, but the sheer depth of Lung’s caginess had grown grating. “I simply wish to know whether you can heat air without the flames. If so, it may be possible for you to ‘influence’ where the ball goes without touching it.”  
  
Kenta put his beer down. “How so?”  
  
Leon smiled. Gifts, the universal language. “On a very basic level, hot and cold air are not quite the same. If you have to groups of air particles, exactly the same in every way, then raise the temperature of one, it will expand. The reverse for cooling down. If a mass of hot air and cold air meet, each will become more like the other until they become homogeneous.”  
  
He pointed at Kenta. “If you were to dramatically heat up the air under a volleyball as it was descending, the change in volume would put pressure on the bottom of the ball. This could theoretically slow it down, and if the pocket of heated air was not perfectly placed would also likely change the path of its descent. Say, from a good corner shot to just outside the boundaries of the arena.”  
  
Leon dropped his hand and shrugged. “On the other hand, if you can only create flames, then this is mere theory crafting. Not worth the breath wasted on it. An interesting thought exercise, however useless.” One had to be willing to waste money to earn money. Replace money with any resource, save for perhaps time, and Leon’s general policy on risk-taking came into being.  
  
Kenta considered the words, taking them down with the yeasty passion-fruit infused beer. Leon let the conversation drop  
  
“How do you know about the nature of air?”  
  
Well then.  
  
“I took a few entry-level science courses at the university.” When Kenta’s eyebrows shot up, Leon rolled his eyes. Ah, the stereotype of the uneducated gangster, and coming from a gangster who almost certainly spoke and wrote no fewer than four separate languages fluently. Heavens save the world from underestimation. “Is it so absurd to think that one wishing to know more about oneself would first attempt to learn about the world? Secluding myself with a collection of textbooks would hardly lead to a well-rounded knowledge base, and would leave me potentially blind to my own errors without peers to check me.”  
  
Kenta made a non-committal noise and lifted his glass to the light, checking how much was left, then took another sip. “It seems as if there would be much investment for potentially little reward.”  
  
Leon considered that.  
  
Then he held out his hand, formed a short bar of bone, and dropped it on the table between them. “Attempt to break that.”  
  
Kenta picked up the slim white object, held it in both hands, and flexed. The bone snapped quietly, and Kenta snorted. “Simple.”  
  
Leon nodded, then made a second item, apparently identical. “Now try this.”  
  
This time, Kenta’s muscles bulged impotently. This time, raw force was inadequate. This time, after straining against the tiny object, covered it with one hand. Leon saw a glow behind the skin, could smell the burning material, and when Kenta pulled his hand away could almost feel the black burns on the surface of the bone.  
  
It took three cycles of that before Kenta could break the bone, and even then it was hardly clean.  
  
“There are in excess of two hundred bones in the adult human body. No two are precisely the same, and none are strictly more useful than the others.”  
  
Leon lifted up his hand and produced five different bone talons, one on each finger. “The first bone I gave you was most similar to the small bones in your hand. Light, but fragile.”  
  
He pulled the talons back, the grew out five more. “The second was not a type of bone grown in the human body. The closest analog I can think of is an amalgamation of a tooth and a femur, and two inches of it can stop small arms fire from any and every weapon I have yet encountered.”  
  
Leon pulled the talons back in and went back to his juice. “I can fly using the first type of bone. With the second I am a battleship. Without an understanding of biology and engineering, I would not have considered either result in the realm of possibility.”  
  
“Lavere/Takahashi versus Jackson/Kessard, you have five minutes to report to arena three for your second match.”  
  
Kenta stood up. “I will consider your words.”  
  
Leon finished his drink, then stood up with him. “Our powers are not inanimate. Reward them, explore their limits, and do not be afraid to fail. Only then will you truly understand it, and with that half of every battle is won.”  
  
“Sun Tzu.”  
  
Leon stepped out into the sun. “Of course. Now then, let us irritate these choleric-tempered peasants and take this meaningless trophy. I will enjoy the sharks all the more for those who do not see them.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The tournament was something of an anticlimax.  
  
Leon was a perfect shield, impossibly mobile on the sand and capable of stringing back any spike, lob, or block without so much as a stagger. Kenta’s raw strength made his opponents shudder in fear, and even though he’d stopped deliberately aiming for them multiple opponents concede for fear of injury. The finals were a little closer, if only in the fact that it became a contest of endurance instead of a hitting match when the pair against recognized that a spike from Kenta was essentially the same thing as scoring.  
  
Of course, then they were trying to outlast a skin-covered bone automotam, which was hardly fair either.  
  
The contest should have been a drag. Leon and Kenta outmatched any other given pair of athletes, and most of the other competitors could only be called athletes in the most general sense of the term. Once Kenta had given up playing fair, there should’ve been nothing remotely engaging about the one sided slaughter.  
  
Except it was engaging. Each second was a living moment, his enhanced senses picking up every detail, from the salty/sour taste of perspiration in the air to the slightly-changing rhythms of three other heartbeats to the minute dilations of his opponents’ pupils. Each rally was a battle, each battle a moment of purity, and when Kenta hammered the final point home he almost smiled.  
  
Almost, because by then the moment had passed.  
  
Now Kenta and Leon were on the edge of boat, listening to the lead diver. She spent a lot of time stressing the potential dangers of shark diving, with graphic pictures of tourists who’d stuck their arms out when they weren’t supposed to. Leon made all the right noises at the right times, while Kenta merely took in the injuries with a clinical eyes, gauging the magnitude of the wounds.  
  
Bite wounds became substantially less disturbing when you’d inflicted a few.  
  
After the agonizingly long explanation, Kenta and Leon were guided into a metal cage. Said cage was lifted, move a little to the side, then lowered into the water.  
  
There Kenta saw monsters.  
  
Not in the Brockton Bay sense. Not in the US sense. Not even in the global sense. Instead, the beasts evoked a primal response, a shiver not entirely fathomable, a wariness that couldn’t be chalked up to simple caution. Here were ancient beasts, not in the sense that they were old, but in the sense that they’d be around long after Kenta was gone.  
  
Humbling, in away, but also invigorating.  
  
There were the great whites, of course. Larger than Kenta, seen on half a dozen films, pictures, posters, too ubiquitous to miss. Makos, known because he’d seen them in school as part of a biology class. Smaller ones, shaped like torpedoes, that seemed almost playful. Life, sharp, hard, and predatory, completely unconcerned with him. More, unrecognizable, never recognizable, and as they descended further the make up shifted more.  
  
The cage stopped and the lead diver tapped her watch. Kenta saw her hold up five fingers, then two, then a fist. He nodded, as did Leon, and settled in to enjoy the show.  
  
This was not like watching the waves. This was not like shooting the shit with his men. It was not like anything in particular at all, but also not _not_ like other things. The sight reminded him of the first time he’d seen Daiichi’s power in action, or the first real cape fight he’d been in, or seeing a motorcycle. Awe inspiring, inscrutable, more _deep_ and _beyond_ than _big_ , like an ocean suspended just above his head.  
  
None of them could hurt him. Even if the cage shattered, if his respirator malfunctioned, if the monsters smelled blood in the water and went made with rage, Kenta could boil them alive. He hadn’t used his power properly in days, and anything short of decapitation wouldn’t put him down fast enough to matter.  
  
No, the sharks weren’t the most dangerous thing in the water.  
  
Kenta’s eyes wandered to Leon. To Marquis. To the single most lethal individual who called Brockton Bay home. Honorable, in that his word mattered. Honest, in that he never made a threat he couldn’t back up. Handsome, if you preferred men lean.  
  
And a father.  
  
Leon was absorbed in the sight of the fish around him and the lead diver was focused on the functions of various instruments around her, so Kenta had free reign to consider the man. All of him, from the gently-floating locks, untouched by grease, to his skin, unmarred for all the years he’d been a cape with territory. A brute rating more than likely, but the process had never mattered to Kenta.  
  
Only the results.  
  
Handsome, if you were into men. Kenta had tried boys, past their first flush of youth, and found them lacking. Not for their physical appeal, but for their immaturity. Always with the fumbling, with the questions, with the fear of disturbing the dragon. Whores, at least, had the confidence to tell him to stop. At least they would push back, in what limited ways they could. Never enough to threaten him, to be presumptuous, but enough to make it more than the motion of a body against another.  
  
That Kenta craved, more than anything else. An indescribable _something_ , of connection, of _you are not worthless_ between two humans. A confident claim, one grounded in inviolable certainty, one that made the sex almost superfluous. Communication, crude and direct, but not inelegant.  
  
Kenta floated in the water, staring at Leon staring at the sharks, and found the sight before him so soothing he forgot how to breathe.  
  
The lead diver swam into view and tapped her wrist. Kenta nodded, Leon nodded, and they ascended to the real world once more. After getting out of their gear, the lead diver asked about what they thought of the dive.  
  
“Sublime,” Leon supplied.  
  
Kenta shrugged. “It was alright.”


	8. Chapter 8

The Luau was agony.  
  
Not because the entertainment was anything less than spectacular. No, Leon had enjoyed being walked through the process of roasting a pig underground. The construction of Pacific Islander nets and baskets had given him ideas for a mesh snare to experiment with, the scorched-wood totems were sufficiently evocative, and the tattoo models were striking enough to make him stop in place and consider them.  
  
Then he’d noticed Kenta doing the same and had to move away.  
  
Insane. Actually, factually, insane. He was a crime boss, not a blushing school child with a crush. He’d nearly died more times than anyone outside the armed forces could claim, forced his way into rooms filled with individuals at least as violent as he was with fewer scruples, and come out ahead every time. Being around an individual he found attractive shouldn’t have been a problem.  
  
Yet Leon found himself steering away from Kenta during the art show, keeping a screen of people between them while remaining close enough to sense the dragon. Yet Leon found himself angling around Kenta when picking from the serving plates, only selecting food which Kenta himself had already gone to. Yet Leon found himself trying to shift in his seat, to both put space between himself and Kenta while turning more completely to face the man.  
  
After leaning out of the way of the man for what felt like the fiftieth time, Leon decided enough was enough.  
  
He stood up and made to go away. Kenta didn’t say anything, but Leon could imagine the weight of his eyes on his back. Heavy, curious, and perhaps just as torn on action as his own.  
  
Except Leon couldn’t look back to confirm it without breaking something he wasn’t sure he could fix.  
  
In the bathroom Leon washed his face, then looked into the mirror. A more-sober, calm, and collected man looked back. Handsome enough, though addressing such thoughts towards oneself never gave good answers. His shirt had one more button done than was strictly necessary for a casual event, but that was hardly a disaster. His beard was trimmed, his teeth more or less clean, and the end result of perhaps a dozen directly-namable components came together in what he’d reluctantly call a well settled and attractive individual.  
  
All a lie packed to the bursting with chaos and confusion underneath, but Leon had yet to meet a person who wasn’t less together than they appeared.  
  
Leon took a deep breath, held it and nodded. “Do not lie to yourself. Do not hold back. Do not be afraid to take risks.”  
  
Then he left the bathroom.  
  
The rest of the meal went much more smoothly. There was still no contact, still no skin-on-skin, but that had become a matter of two individuals respecting one another rather than deliberate avoidance. Kenta made a comment about a woman from the volleyball tournament glaring at them, Leon responded lightly, and they both went back to eating silently. Both enjoyed their after-dinner drinks silently, applauded the dancers with well-mannered restraint, and for every moment acted the parts of two good friends enjoying a pleasant night.  
  
Then the fire dancers came out.  
  
Leon was not new to dangerous forms of entertainment. Shooting, joyrides, casual larceny; one did not pursue a career as a crime boss and live a life free of vice. People needed to blow off steam, and the methods for doing so among his immediate company disproportionately skewed towards the physically perilous. In a sense, watching a man twirl a torch like a baton was not substantially different from watching a pair of gangsters hurtle down an empty street in souped-up muscle cars.  
  
Where the difference between the racers and the professionals came out was in the precision on display. The fire was never went more than a foot away from his bare, unprotected flesh, but also never too close. The fire never stopped moving, never left the performer’s hands, save for when the stick burning from both ends spun through the air. It would come down, land perfectly in an outstretched hand, then once more return to its twirling circuit around the man’s chest. Finger would leave the torch, letting momentum and physics control the hazard, and not once did the risk come back to bite the performer, the two yellow brands somehow ever coming to touch flesh. Hazards managed, the appearance of danger without any of the risk, an illusion in place because almost no one could actually pull it off.  
  
And Kenta was fascinated.  
  
He would never admit it. The man seemed to operate under the supposition that an expression other than stoic neutrality was a sign of weakness, but even with Kenta’s truly admirable levels of control he had tells. The way his face went still, even as his muscles loosened. How he’d flare his nostrils, just a little bit, and lean towards his interest.  
  
In the three days since Lung had become Kenta, Leon’s understanding of his expressions had deepened dramatically. No one would describe the man as emotive, but there were signs to look for. The precise angle of his eyebrows, or the tilt of his mouth, or just how narrowed his eyes became. Little things, mostly inconsequential, but when taken together told a story. Flat lips, closed eyes, and a furrowed brow was pain, while an unlined forehead, gentle smile, and open lids meant joy. Variety came from the mixture and complication of each individual component, and nuance from context.  
  
Kenta’s eyes traced the path of the flames, and Leon wondered what the trails of fire felt like to a pyrokinetic.  
  
The show wrapped up, and this time Kenta didn’t hold back with his applause. Leon endured the near-gunshot noises next him with good cheer, and when Kenta quietly placed a thick fold of bills under his plate Leon made sure to add a note about who to direct the tip to. On the way back to the boat he enjoyed the warm, comfortable silence.  
  
Once they were underway, Leon tilted his head back to look up at the sky, impossibly full of stars. “Ursa Major and Minor are visible here.”  
  
Kenta turned to face Leon. “Hmm?”  
  
“In Brockton Bay, the city lights drown out all but the most powerful stars. You can’t see anything without a telescope. Here they seem to have curbed the human desire to push back the night somewhat.”  
  
Kenta looked up with him. “They are stars. What of them?”  
  
Leon sighed. “There is not a romantic bone in your body, is there?”  
  
The two of them stood out on the deck for the rest of the trip. Rain began to fall, gentle and kind, and neither of them followed the crowd heading back into the desk. Leon deflected the few crew members who tried to guide him inside, while Kenta merely began subtly steaming.  
  
Once the deck was free of spectators, Leon closed to Kenta’s side.  
  
He pointed up at a cluster of lights, glittering in the rain. “Beside Ursa Major and Ursa Minor lies Hercules, perhaps the greatest son of Zeus. Strong, skilled in contests of arms, and as cursed as any man who ever lived. His is a tale of a great man brought low by the jealousy of another, enslavement to causes not his own, and death at the hands of a woman too insecure to simply trust that he loved her. After burning to death while dressed in the blood of a centaur, Zeus took his soul from the funeral pyre and gave him godhood.”  
  
Leon dropped his arm to his side. “A terrible father, to only show favor to one’s son post-mortem.”  
  
“And suppose you will be better?”  
  
When Leon turned to look up at him, Kenta raised one of his hands in surrender. “I mean no harm. Only to inquire.”  
  
Leon turned back to the stars. “If I found that my wife had driven Amy mad and forced her to slaughter her spouse and children, then I would be seeking another partner shortly afterwards.”  
  
He cast a glance to the side. “And I have been seeking for a very, very long time.”  
  
Kenta considered the words.  
  
Then he put a hand on Leon’s shoulder, stepped in closer, and lowered his head.  
  
Halfway through their first kiss, the sirens sounded.  
  
Kenta broke off the embrace, a long-forgotten panic flooding his system. “We have to run.”  
  
Leon was already covered in bone, a sleek, dangerous-looking armor that seemed like it’d crawled its way out of the Marianas trench. “Indeed. While it may be a tad degrading, the most expedient way to reach the rendezvous point almost certainly involves you hanging onto me as I swim through the water. I assume your brute rating will let you endure the cold, and in advance I apologize for my actions. The seconds count in an Endbringer fight.”  
  
Kenta growled, slipping into a foreign tongue. Leon never had time to learn the language of his enemies, and now was dearly regretting that. Kenta put out a hand, grabbing his shoulder pauldron extremely firmly, and kept talking at him, still in a language other than English.  
  
Good enough.  
  
Marquis spiraled a tendril of bone spiraled around Lung’s arm, then tipped them both over the railing.


	9. Chapter 9

_“You’re not listening!”_ Lung growled, latching onto a spiny pauldron. _“No rendezvous, no fight, we just—”_

A tendril of bone spiraled around his arm and the next thing he knew they were falling over the edge.

The impact into the water was smoother than he thought it’d be. So was the transition from fumbling in the water to movement to ascending to the surface to skipping across the ocean, water bubbling where flashes of white motion did _something_ under the waves to propel them forward. The tendril around his arm withdrew, reforming between his fingers to form something like a handle, and when a second grew out of the platform Lung grabbed that too. Soon he was secure enough to crane his head up, to look at the distant shoreline, already a little unlike it had been earlier.

They were too close.

Marquis oozed out of the body of the craft, staying low against its shaking surface. “You become more powerful as fights go on. Is there a cap to your growth, or—”

“You are going to lose!”

For a few breaths, the only sound was the growing storm.

“I fought Leviathan at Kyushu. One on one. To the end.” The words came out mechanically, a not-quite-secret left to rot for so long that all Lung could do was recite it.

“I fought Leviathan. It. I grew stronger than you’ve ever seen me. Stronger than anyone you know. Stronger than Alexandria. I grew two pairs of wings. An extra set of arms. I burned until my fire scorched beyond sight. I could hear each and every rain drop into the ocean evaporating above us.”

Lung let his power grow. Just a little. Just enough to catch sight of something that looked dark grey and green, moved too fast to see, and ran shadowed with water.

“I grew, and then I stopped. I burned deeper than anyone else had, and then my flames were not enough. I went to the absolute limit of my power, and do you know what I learned?”

He nodded towards the shoreline. “That some things are simply inevitable.”

Lung let the words settle.

“My god you really are pathetic, aren’t you?”

Lung’s grip tightened, cracking his handholds. “What.”

The boat sped up. “I said that you were pathetic. The waves are loud but certainly not enough to drown out my words, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“What do you know?” Lung snarled. “Have you—”

“Yes.”

Lung shut up.

“After Amy I refrained from traveling to Endbringer fights but suffice to say yes, I know.” Lung could barely hear Marquis through the mask, but the words were there. Confident, even, and perfectly enunciated while aboard a rattling speed boat made of bone. Some things beggars belief. “After a disastrous attempt to engage the serpent in melee, I was sent to the backlines to provide material for healers and fix broken limbs. I also performed search and rescue operations against Behemoth.”

“We’re too close,” Lung muttered, eyes locked on the rapidly-approaching cityscape.

“I know about the smell of rotten water. I can no longer eat bacon after Lyon. There is death, and then there is slaughter. The difference between the two marks the difference between bad people and monsters.”

Marquis nodded at the city in Lung’s peripheral vision. Perhaps he couldn’t see the tiny form, flitting about in the air and blasting the monster with light, but Lung could. “That is a monster.”

“Men you can kill.”

They rode for a little longer in silence.

Lung began to hear the sounds of battle.

“No one ever thought we could defeat an Endbringer.”

For a second, Lung thought he’d imagined it.

Marquis looked to the side, bone pulling back just enough to let Lung see his eyes. “What, precisely, do you think counts as a win to me? Is it fifty percent casualties? Forty? Is it coming home in one piece thanks to the work of a corpse grafter, knowing that lungs come from another man?”

“Against the Endbringers, there is no victory,” Lung replied quietly. “Like fighting a typhoon.”

The boat ran ashore, going from fins to limbs in moments, bucking Lung to standing while Marquis simply absorbed the bone into his armor. “And yet disaster relief specialists exist.”

For a heartbeat, Lung and Marquis stared at one another.

Then Marquis turned away. “I will spend the opening of the battle attempting to retrieve and repair those I can. If you cannot find it within yourself to face Leviathan in direct combat, perhaps you can at least evaporate some of the water lying around.”

Two massive wings grew from Marquis’s back, skeletal and thin. After an experimental flap, the material grew even thinner, and with the next Marquis took to the air.

“I would remind you that a draw is less of a loss than retreat!” he shouted, the words nearly lost to the rain and wind. “And that it seems to me as if you’ve done an awful lot of running!”

Lung watched Marquis fly off, one hand clenched, the other itching with the urge to hurl fire. A coil of something thick and vicious had brewed in his stomach, part loathing and part shame, an urge to lash out paired with the urge to run. To have known the nature of the Endbringers for minutes, _seconds_ , and to have concluded that Sisyphus should be happy?

Insanity, pure and simple.

And yet the other half of the equation demanded that Lung castigate himself. It looked more closely at his self-imposed rules, his habits, his wants, and found them insufficient. It asked him why he hadn’t bothered to consider what his fire could do besides burn, why he hadn’t considered the conductive potential of his scales, why he hadn’t learned to lip read.

That side of himself was the one who kept looking for Marquis long after he’d disappeared behind a building. Not with fury, but with longing.

Lung closed his eyes and listened for the sounds of death.

At first that meant the crash of water. Not the rain, not the waves, but something else, a thud mixed with a splash, alien to the ears of man. Pressure, more than could occur in nature, more than should occur, brought to land in the form of a three-story killing machine. Liquid on concrete, through glass, against metal, unique noises that all blended together in the same auditory range.

Then there were the sounds of the defenders. The warbles of exotic blaster projectiles, the ruffle of capes and loose fabric in costumes, and the keening of a shaker doing something fucky with the environment. No two parahumans sounded the same, not even children to their parents, but it was never hard to tell when a cape _was_ involved.

The powers weren’t all of the story. The city spoke as well, in the sounds of order disrupted. Car alarms, stores wailing impotently over their broken windows, fizzing power lines torn from the ground and left to writhe in a world filled with conductors. The gurgle of water, so much water, seeking out openings and filling all of them. Drowning.

And that wasn’t all.

There were the cries of surprise, immediately followed by the foreign sound of water moving faster than a car. Whimpers of pain in the aftermath, forming a trail of death and destruction that twist and turned through the city. People who couldn’t make it to the half-built shelters in time, capes who couldn’t beat the odds, whoever.

Kenta had looked at the statistics once. A comparison between Hitler and Leviathan, one in such poor taste that only a child with facial tattoos could show it to a survivor, which pointed out that since Leviathan had only sunk Kyushu and Newfoundland he still wasn’t as bad as a Nazi.

He had taken the statement silently, then seared the boy’s face off.

Lung opened his eyes. The world was sharper than it had been when he closed, less significant, more fragile. When he took his first step forward, his foot sank oddly into the sand, shoeless and scaled. Once on the pavement the ankle-deep water irritated him, so he filled the air with fire.

The world got smaller as he ran. Slowly. Doorways became inadequate, chairs for children, and cars like toys. Lung kept running, his legs twisting over the block, until it became easier to blind. His back bulged, cracked, then straightened, suddenly more flexible than a whip. He could feel his neck grow long, serpent-like, and his mouth warp from the growth of teeth.

Nothing compared to his senses. Nothing compared to the tastes of already-decaying bodies. Nothing compared to hearing a heart finally stop.

When Lung turned the corner to see Leviathan, he had to claw at the ground to avoid falling over. Two different pulses spiked in his chest when four glowing green eyes locked into his, and he almost broke.

Instead he roared, loud enough to spray back the rain, and charged. **_“I’ll ‘ill ou, uther’ucker!”_**


	10. Chapter 10

When Amy got home, Danielle was cooking.  
  
Amy sighed, dropped her bag at the door, and went into the bathroom to wash her hands. “What’d you do this time?”  
  
Something in the kitchen broke, prompting a curse. “Can’t I just make a fucking dinner? Why is that every time I do anything remotely nice or decent people assume that something’s gone wrong that I need to butter them up? Is it so weird for me to just do something nice!?”  
  
Amy finished soaping her hands, rinsed them, then walked into the kitchen with a firmly neutral expression. She pointedly ignored the pickled plum on the floor, the broken window, and the scorched stove top. She didn’t comment on the irregular haircut, or the smell of burnt meat, or the large chain of bruises that traveled from just under one ear to the dip of her neckline.  
  
Instead Amy grabbed a handful of sticky rice and started moulding it.  
  
After a second Danielle went back to work as well.  
  
“You handle balls really well,” Amy said carefully.  
  
“Oh _fuck_ you.”  
  
“I mean the rice balls!” Amy clarified, holding up a misshapen lump. “Yours are always round and perfect and somehow not super gross, but mine always end up being fugly blobs. You’ve shown me how to do it a million times but I still don’t get it.”  
  
Danielle sighed. “It’s an experience thing. Not too much force, not too little. If you made your own lunches every day you’d be just as good as me in a month.”  
  
Amy groaned, smoothing out a patch of seaweed. “But then I’d have to get uuuuuuup.”  
  
“‘Oh, woe is me, having to wake up,’” Danielle dead panned, placing a clean, symmetrical cylinder next to five near-identical rolls.  
  
“Not all of us are freaks of nature who wake up before your average cock,” Amy muttered, grabbing salt, rubbing it between her hands, and molding another ball.  
  
Danielle smirked. “And you know all about cocks, don’t you?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Amy shot back.  
  
For a while the sisters worked in silence.  
  
“I got into a fight,” Danielle said quietly.  
  
Amy examined her latest attempt, which was marginally more sphere-like than a rock. “Did you win?”  
  
“Someone was shit talking dad at school, I got up in his face, and when he went to push me I escalated. He’ll be alright, but...”  
  
“You got suspended because he couldn’t take a punch,” Amy summed up, putting down something which one could argue was an onigiri. “And you’re worried that dad’s going to get mad about that?”  
  
Danielle cringed. “I’m worried he’ll get mad about the garden.”  
  
Amy paused.  
  
Then she looked out the window.  
  
Leon and Kenta disagreed on a lot of things. No issue was too small, no detail too inconsequential to quibble over, and it seemed like the two of them would never come to a conclusion about anything without at least a week of argument.  
  
The garden had been no different. Kenta had demanded plain rocks, interspersed with under stated greenery, while Leon put forward a plan focused around a hedge maze. A sane solution would’ve involved splitting the area I half, or perhaps delegating they design to a third party. Instead the two had merely attempted to out-plant one another with a collective three weeks of landscaping experience between them, resulting in a tangled mess of over-grown and intertwined rose bushes interspaced with pits of gravel that only its creator could love.  
  
Previously interspaced with rose bushes, rather.  
  
Amy sighed. “You actually tore apart all of the rose bushes.”  
  
Danielle growled and wrapped another cylinder of rice. “I was angry, alright?”  
  
“When are you not?”  
  
“Fuck you!”  
  
More silence passed. The pile of rice balls grew.  
  
Danielle’s hands came to a stop. “I just...”  
  
She trailed off.  
  
Amy finished the modern art piece in her hands, then started packing up the remaining ingredients. “I think we’ve got enough rice balls.”  
  
Danielle looked at the pyramid, then shook her head. “Yeah.”  
  
“Especially since it's date night,” Amy added.  
  
Danielle stopped mid-step.  
  
“They’re going to a play, then to one of the clubs. Probably won’t be back until late tomorrow at the earliest, and more likely not until the weekend’s over.” Amy snapper the lid closed on the salty rice and grinned. “Plenty of time to do some free-style landscaping with my darling little sister.”  
  
Danielle’s eyes shone for a moment. “This little sister’s going to kick your ass if you’re not careful with the ‘darling’.”  
  
The words held no fire though, and after washing her hands Danielle hugged Amy from behind, burying her head in Amy’s shoulder.  
  
“Thanks,” she mumbled.  
  
Amy patted her on the head. “What are older siblings for?”  
  
“Beating up for lunch money.” Danielle growled, hugging tighter.  
  
“And also bailing their little sisters out of trouble when they need it.” Amy rubbed Danielle’s head one more time, then let her hand drop. “He loves you, you know.”  
  
Danielle pushed away from Amy and went back to packing up. “He loves _you_. He _tolerates_ me.”  
  
“Would my dad tolerate someone he didn’t love wreck the car twice?” Amy asked, grabbing a perfect rice cylinder before Danielle could shove it into its plastic prison. “Maybe if you didn’t give him the death glare him every time we went out as a family—”  
  
Danielle spun around, throwing her arms wide and growling. “He fucking glares at me first!”  
  
Amy raised an eyebrow. “You mean the thing where he smiles at you without saying anything?”  
  
“Yeah!”  
  
“That’s not a glare.”  
  
The noise that Danielle made wasn’t human, and neither was the sudden sheen to her nails. “Well it fucking feels like a glare!”  
  
Amy waited for Danielle to stop wheezing, keeping her own expression carefully neutral.  
  
Once she was sure Danielle had her breath under control, Amy jerked her finger towards the deck. “Smoke break?”  
  
Danielle took a deep breath, held it, and nodded. “Fine.”  
  
After working their way through two cigarettes each, Amy closed the pack and put away the lighter. “Dad loves you. Both of them.”  
  
Danielle’s hand curled into a fist around the cigarette butt. “Then why’d he leave me?”  
  
Amy pulled her legs up to her chest. “Because our dad’s aren’t great people.”  
  
Danielle let the distant sound of sirens fill the silence.  
  
“Dad’s not glaring at you.” Danielle didn’t interrupt her, so Amy kept going. “He’s just... trying to figure you out. He knows you like having space and are used to doing your own thing. He doesn’t want to piss you off by accident, so he picks and chooses how to interact with you.”  
  
Amy leaned over and bumped shoulders with Danielle. “He’d do stuff with you. If you asked him.”  
  
Danielle snorted and dropped the cigarette butt in the ashtray. “Like what, go to an opera? Drink fancy wines and lie about them? Play baseball?”  
  
“I was thinking power stuff.”  
  
Danielle turned to the side, quizzical. “But what about you?”  
  
Amy kept looking out into the distance. “What about me?”  
  
“Don’t give me—”  
  
“I’m going to college next year,” Amy interrupted. “Do you know how many parahumans trigger after sixteen?”  
  
“I’m not replacing you!”  
  
Amy smiled. “No. You’re not.”  
  
“We’re sisters! We do everything together!”  
  
“Yes and most things.” Her grin grew teeth. “I mean, if you want to learn how to eat pussy—”  
  
Danielle clapped her hands over her ears. “La la la not listening to the story about all the gay sex my sister is having!”  
  
Amy cackled and another silence descended, this one more amiable.  
  
“You’re serious.”  
  
“You’re so like Kenta it’s stupid sometimes,” Amy said lightly.  
  
“Not in the mood, Ames.”  
  
Amy sighed. “I think Dad’s happy that I didn’t trigger. I also think that I’m going to miss a lot of his life because I can’t create freaky bone spikes.”  
  
“When we’re out doing stuff, he’ll make these comments. About masks. Double entendres, metaphors, whatever. Not normal jokes, either. There’s a layer to them that I don’t immediately get, and whenever something goes over my head he does this little frown and moves on. It’s only hours later that I realize he’d been trying to tell me something.”  
  
She reached out and poked Danielle. “You pick up on it though. He’ll say something to the waitress, something I think is just talk, and you’ll freak the fuck out. Or he’ll be talking about some random fact, you’ll tell him it’s stupid, and Kenta and I will leave the room to let you argue.”  
  
Amy pulled back. “You’re on the same wavelength.”  
  
It took a minute for Danielle to work through Amy’s words.  
  
“I’ll give him a try.” Amy didn’t respond, and Danielle moved closer. “I’ll talk about power testing, he can offer something, and whatever happens after that happens.”  
  
Amy stuck out her arm and pulled Danielle in for a one-armed, nicotine-scented hug. “Can’t ask for more than that.”  
  
After holding the embrace, Amy let go and pushed up to her feet. “Okay, since the Dads are gone it’s time to throw a party.”  
  
“What the fuck? We still have to fix the garden and if Leon finds out we invited unvetted people over he’ll fucking flip!”  
  
“We’ve got tomorrow and the day after. Price of admission will be beer money plus helping out on Sunday. This is a great idea, trust me.”  
  
“I don’t trust you and don’t know they’re staying out for the weekend! Ames, we’re not fucking doing this!”  
  
“Try and stop me!”


End file.
